Suitably Flip

Longest-Serving Fed Official: Suck It Up, It's Not That Bad

(I'm paraphrasing, slightly.)

It seems to me that sober assessments like these, from people in a position to know, go a lot further toward stemming irrational economic doomsaying than let's-cry-together websites from the federal government.

The U.S. economy should find its footing around the middle of the year even after another “significant” contraction in the first quarter, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Gary Stern said Tuesday.
...
His tenure, the longest of any current Fed official, spans the chairmanships of Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.

“One of the things I’ve observed coming out of the last two recessions is that there’s always a lot of concern about (how) ‘this is a very fragile recovery’” and worries that “if the Fed doesn’t do just the right thing…the whole thing will collapse again,” he said, leading to talk of “double dips, triple dips.”

Stern knows from experience how hard it is to spot the trough of a business cycle. Recalling his days as the Minneapolis Fed’s research director in 1982, he said that he told the Minneapolis Fed’s directors that there was “no sign of the recession ending” in November of that year. Of course, the National Bureau of Economic Research eventually determined that the recession did in fact end that
same month.
...
Stern disputes comparisons between the current economic downturn and the Great Depression. ... For those of us who were around for ‘80-’82 and ‘73-’75, what’s happening in the economy and a lot of the rhetoric that goes with it rings more familiar,” he said.

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Longest-Serving Fed Official: Suck It Up, It's Not That Bad

(I'm paraphrasing, slightly.)

It seems to me that sober assessments like these, from people in a position to know, go a lot further toward stemming irrational economic doomsaying than let's-cry-together websites from the federal government.

The U.S. economy should find its footing around the middle of the year even after another “significant” contraction in the first quarter, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Gary Stern said Tuesday.
...
His tenure, the longest of any current Fed official, spans the chairmanships of Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.

“One of the things I’ve observed coming out of the last two recessions is that there’s always a lot of concern about (how) ‘this is a very fragile recovery’” and worries that “if the Fed doesn’t do just the right thing…the whole thing will collapse again,” he said, leading to talk of “double dips, triple dips.”

Stern knows from experience how hard it is to spot the trough of a business cycle. Recalling his days as the Minneapolis Fed’s research director in 1982, he said that he told the Minneapolis Fed’s directors that there was “no sign of the recession ending” in November of that year. Of course, the National Bureau of Economic Research eventually determined that the recession did in fact end that
same month.
...
Stern disputes comparisons between the current economic downturn and the Great Depression. ... For those of us who were around for ‘80-’82 and ‘73-’75, what’s happening in the economy and a lot of the rhetoric that goes with it rings more familiar,” he said.