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Monday, December 1, 2008

Indiana's (Overly?)Optimistic Economist

Michael Hicks (and or his fellow Ball State economists), economist at Ball State University in Muncie, IN and director of its Center of Business and Economic Research, predicted the "US likely went into recession... late third quarter."

Unfathomably, the IBJ quotes him as actually saying:
"Very few people will actually lose their jobs."
This quote single-handedly says a couple things about him:
1. He is insensitive

2. He apparently has been reading some alternate universe labor report. The report I read from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the number of unemployed people in the last 12 months has risen by more than 2.7 million

To be fair, the article was poorly written, and it weaved in and out about Indiana recession and US recession so it's unclear when Mr. Hicks was talking about which entity: Indiana or the US.

Nevertheless, NBER just today announced that we've REALLY been in recession since December 2007.

Oops.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice blog!

It sure beats that notorious kook Doug Henwood.