On Mar 10, 2009, at 5:20 PM, John Thornton wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> On Mar 10, 2009, at 1:25 PM, SA wrote:
>>
>>> "We are in the 15th month of a recession," said Nouriel Roubini,
>>> a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business,
>>> told CNBC in a live interview. "Growth is going to be close to
>>> zero..."
>>
>> See, he's still an optimist!
>>
>>> [I recall some talk about his previous 9% call being not so bad.]
>>
>> I believe that was me, among others. A 9% unemployment rate is
>> nasty, but it's not consistent with the intense gloom associated
>> with Roubini. If he's marking it up to beyond 10%, that is closer
>> to intense gloom. But "growth close to zero" isn't; -5% or -10% is
>> more like gloom. Me, I think we're going to see -5% for the first
>> half of the year, tending towards 0% later in the year and staying
>> there for some time.
>
>
> And a ~12% unemployment rate.
Rule of thumb time. A -5% growth rate should push up the unemployment rate by a bit over 3 points over the course of a year; 0% will push it up a bit over 1 point. So if we get -5% for the first half of the year and 0% for the second, we're talking about a 2+ point rise by year- end, which would take it up over 10%.
Doug