Not only that he brings up the GDP methodology when he wants to say the current recession is worse than it is, but when he wants to say the 1982 recession was worse than this one he goes right to the numbers with the current methodology and ignores the fact the most significant changes occurs in 1983.
You are soooo dishonest or clueless, it's pathetic.
Let me explain to everyone else why the above statement by you is both false and illogical.
First, I said the 1981-82 recession was worse than the current one
at the time that Obama first claimed the opposite was true back in January-February of 2009 … in this thread:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135124. In January of 2009 Obama stated that "whether it’s retail sales, manufacturing,
all of the indicators show that we are in the worst recession since the Great Depression." And I noted that by comparing specific figures (unemployment rate, inflation rate, the delta in real GDP, the delta in industrial production, the 30 year mortgage rate, and even the "misery index"), that simply wasn't true. I had many reasons besides just the delta in GDP growth to say what I said. And no one proved me wrong. And you certainly could have mentioned that the deflator was wrong if YOU'D known about it. But you didn't.
For example, the unemployment rate back in 1981recession reached 10.8 percent. At the time Obama made his claim the unemployment rate was no where near that (only about 8.5%). In fact, he claimed that his stimulus package would prevent it from even reaching 9%. And even though he was wrong, it still never exceeded the 1981 unemployment rate. And as noted, above, the NBER has explicitely stated that their main criteria for deciding when this recession began was the unemployment rate. So the unemployment rate has to be a very important parameter if you are going to compare the two recession. You can't just claim it's important now but wasn't important back in 1981-82.
The inflation rate back in 1981-1982 was double digit. Even with an SGS alternate, the inflation rate in 2008-9 wasn't double digit. So on this basis, the situation was worse back in 1981-82.
And regarding GDP growth, I noted that the NYTimes in February of 2009 stated
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/business/economy/28recession.html?_r=1
the Commerce Department gave a harsher assessment for the last three months of 2008. In place of an initial estimate that the economy contracted at an annualized rate of 3.8 percent — already abysmal — the government said that the pace of decline was actually 6.2 percent, making it the worst quarter since 1982.
Back in 1981-82, the delta between the BEA calculated inflation rate and the SGS alterate (
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/gross-domestic-product-charts ) was essentially zero. So whatever delta was calculated in the GDP back then should be fine. And the above article indicates the Commerce department said the pace of decline was 6.2 percent at the beginning of 2009. Curiously, that's consistent with what the SGS alternate growth rate is in the figure in the link above. It appears that the Commerce Department reported what is essentially the SGS alternate growth rate, probably by using internally a more reality based inflation number in their calculations. Recall that earlier I quoted a source (see post 1549) that stated the governments' own estimate of inflation was 5.7% rather than the reported (by the BEA) 1.9%. So it looks like internally the government was using different inflation rates back in 2009 to calculate the growth than those reported by the BEA. In which case, the NYTimes article conclusion that the 1981-82 recession was worse on the basis of GDP growth still holds and is already adjusted for the SGS alternate inflation rate. And I was right.
But now Obama is using the BEA deflator to hide the fact that the current recession is indeed worse NOW than it was back in Jan-Feb of 2009. If they were to use the real inflation numbers (Shadow Stats indicates it's now over 10%), things would look a lot more dire than the Obama adminstration is claiming. All of the above seems to suggest that the Bush administration didn't lie as much about the real gdp growth as the Obama adminstration is now doing.
Now you can go back to being clueless and dishonest, lomiller.
