>I'm not sure where you see such a big change, since I cited Crudele
>complaining about the birth/death model. The point is that models are fine
>as long as the pattern in this recession is similar to the pattern from the
>past on which they base the model. But if new things are happening in the
>economy, then the model will be inherently skewed.
True, but the b/d (birth/death, not bondage/discipline) model is frequently updated - unlike the old "bias factor" method, which wasn't. It's about as close to self-correcting as you can get in social statistics.
>I'm not even sure what has you in the tizzy-- except for disliking
>Crudele-- since raising the question of whether this recession might be
>different, and therefore throwing off lots of different economic models, is
>a pretty basic question raised by a lot of people.
But the stats have been pretty faithfully showing this to have been a very weird cycle - not at all a textbook recession or recovery. So I don't know where the imputation of ordinariness is happening - it's not visible in the numbers.
The name "Crudele" does set me off, because he's a shameless hack. It bothers me when I see otherwise intelligent comrades citing him as an authority.
Doug