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>"This redefining of what constitutes a recession is a recent phenomena, and has political roots, not financial ones."

There has been no "redefining" nor is it a recent phenomenon nor does it have political roots. You are wrong on all accounts.

It doesn't have political roots. The National Bureau of Economic Research(NBER) is a private, non-profit, non-partisan research organization with an aim is to promote a greater understanding of how the economy works.

The nonpartisan panel, which was established in 1978 by former Ronald Reagan adviser and NBER president Martin Feldstein, has gone out of its way to keep politics out of the process.

The committee meets in secret and doesn’t announce its gatherings in advance or even in retrospect, unless there’s a press release declaring a formal decision.

And it typically takes the panel about a year to decide on a recession call, though some decision have been made in a few months while others have taken almost twice as long. That’s almost always well after a recession has been widely recognized by Wall Street.

The committee has never reversed a call.

Rather than two negative GDP readings, the NBER is looking for a substantial decline in activity over a sustained period of time. The committee sets dates of the peaks of economic activity and troughs based on six monthly data series, including nonfarm payrolls, personal consumption spending and industrial production.



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