Learn About Past Recessions With This Cool Interactive Graph
So you're probably sitting around thinking, "I want to know more about stagflation, but I want to have fun clicking stuff on the internet, too." Right? No? Who cares. We're still going to direct your attention to this neat interactive graph from the Harvard Business Review.
It's just too bad that it doesn't go all the way back to the Panic of 1893. That's my favorite panic. In fact, it doesn't even go back to 1929. Still, it's interesting.
Breif History of Recessions [HBR via BuzzFeed]
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Comments:
That's all well and good, but GDP doesn't really mean jack to Main Street. For starters, it doesn't take into effect population growth. If GDP goes up 10% but population goes up 20%, Main Street does worse, despite the nation as a whole doing better.
Throw in increasing wealth consolidation (the class gap) and you have an even less impressive picture.
GDP only matters to the government in terms of the country as a unitary whole. It's a misleading figure to the average American. (It'd be more meaningful in a socialist economy where national wealth is distributed more evenly, fwiw.)
I'd like to know what ADP (Average Domestic Product) is, which at least addresses population change although not wealth consolidation.
Funny, that looks very similar to the inverse value of the dollar.
We are due for deflation: [en.wikipedia.org]
Fed came around in 1913. Take note on this graph: [www.economics-charts.com]
You can thank the Federal Reserve for devaluing our currency.
Sorta looks like average global temperatures over the same time period.
I really didn't like some of the "comments" attached to those time periods. I mean, they give credit to deregulation starting under Reagan for growth -- but history could well judge that as the begining of the end when this chart turns into a J-curve, as it probably will.
I'd like to hack that and add my own comments.
Yippie business grads that don't know when to use a line graph instead of a bar graph. Looking at that graph it looks like I can extrapolate that GDP was 7.95 in 1996 while some hunting pegs it at 7.48 in 1996 (both in 1996 trillions of dollars).
Oh and I love the biased reasons given when you click on the graph, not.
@SkokieGuy: Which I presume contains wisdom like "Choose women who are amenable to the idea of going Dutch.", "Suggest romantic picnic lunches at the park in lieu of expensive, stuffy steak house dinners", etc.
this chart shows most recessions were during the periods of Republican Presidents.....
@UnStatusTheQuo: Ummmm, No. You can thank increasing productivity (rising GDP) for the "devaluation" of the currency. Without even getting technical, anybody should see that an increasing amount of goods flowing in an economy should, no, MUST result in a decreasing valuation of units of currency to maintain REAL purchasing power.
Otherwise you would have rapidly deflating nominal prices and WAGES (which tends to piss people off, even though it doesn't have any 'real' meaning), falling nominal business revenues (also incompatible with corporate paper and stock valuation), etc. etc. An economic boom would result in CRASHING nominal home prices, wages, incomes and tax revenues.
Yes, our "constant inflation" target has some minor negative effects, but mostly these are outweighed by positive psychological benefits. The alternative would actually make things way tougher on everyone, especially accountants.
![[en.wikipedia.org]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_Historical_Inflation.svg){kind=link}
![[www.economics-charts.com]](http://www.economics-charts.com/images/cpi-1800-2005.png){kind=link}
In the Harvard Business Review Article, accompanying the graph, they have a link to:
"official recession dating procedure document".
Priceless!