NBER

The National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee met by conference call last Friday and declared the recession started last December.  This is important for economists, but it can be very frustrating for economic policymakers.  Invariably, economic policymakers want to know why it takes almost a year to declare the start of the recession.  They might have acted differently had they known.  The short answer is that data lags, data is revised several times, and data often conflict on when a recession started or ended.  Combat commanders talk about the "fog of war," and economic policymakers face similar uncertainties and pressures to act.  Fortunately, our economic policymakers acted early this year and have thrown massive amounts of fiscal and monetary policy stimulus at this recession.  It didn't stop the recession from happening, but it almost certainly made it less severe.  Fortunately, we'll never know how severe this recession would have been had nothing been done to counteract it.