Thread: Recession really going to end?

Contrary to this, here is some good news at last.
According to this recent reuters report, the recession is nearing its end it seems. What do you guys think?. Could it be true?. How long do you think it will take to get back to normal just like the times before the GFC (especially for the software industry)?. Pour in your views.

Impossible to say these days. Last year the "days of cheap oil were over for good", remember?

I don't think economists understand economy anymore. It just outgrew everyone and is today a sentient being with its own agenda. I'd trust a corrupt politician before I'd pay attention to an economist. The profession is becoming dangerously useless. The power to predict or affect the outcome is nearly nil. They can only tell us what we already know.

Truth be told we hear more from wannabe half-economists-half-journalists-all-bias analysts than we do from true economists like Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz who are notorious critics of our current systems (one of the reasons being exactly because we lost control).

EDIT: One thing I know for sure. Here in Portugal we are due to two more years of recession after world recession is over. It's mathematics. With an heavily negative trade balance, very few investments in local production for the past 20 years, low population and with the biggest debtor being our own government, we will be riding this for a couple more years while most of the est of Europe will be partying. Such has been our fate for many many years.

Economists predicting the economy are about as good as weather forecasters are at predicting global warming. The UK was heading for a Mediterranean climate, but the last 3 summers have been a washout by comparison with the beginning of the decade.

Germany has just claimed 0.3% growth. I wonder what the error bars are on that? +0.1%,-2% ?
I bet if you remove the best performing sector (govt spending) and the worst performing sector (auto industry?) as being statistical anomalies and recalculate, I'm pretty sure it would still be recession.

It will start to feel like being over when a majority of sectors are experiencing growth and starting to re-hire people. But before that, the sectors need to start growing just to take up the slack in the under-performing workforce which kept their jobs.


Statistics are like bikinis - they suggest everything, yet reveal nothing.


Old saying.
You could lay all the economists in the world end to end around the equator, but you still wouldn't reach a conclusion.

Originally Posted by Salem

Statistics are like bikinis - they suggest everything, yet reveal nothing.

You're just going to the wrong beaches

Originally Posted by Salem

as good as weather forecasters are at predicting global warming. The UK was heading for a Mediterranean climate, but the last 3 summers have been a washout by comparison with the beginning of the decade.

This is just a sort of intentional head-in-the-sand, "I'm selfish and I want everyone to know it" statement made by someone determined to drive around as much as they want and dismiss any accusations of social irresponsibility.

When scientists say average temperatures may rise by like tenths of a degree, etc, they obviously do not mean England is turning into Greece or that some years won't continue to be colder than others.

Going with "you can have your own opinion, just not your own facts": If you don't care about global warming, that's fine*, but whether or not you "believe" in it is about as relevant and meaningful as whether my hamster does. And my hamster has a big brain, for a hamster...

* why not tell the truth?

Originally Posted by MK27

And my hamster has a big brain, for a hamster...

It's true, she kicked my but in Go

20 to 30 years ago, all the "scientific" advice was the imminent approach of a mini ice age.
Global cooling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What makes today's predictions any better than back then, apart from being today's predictions?
Will they be right, or will the next generation look back and "ROFL - what were they thinking!?"

More conspiracy?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...te-secret.html

It is that the multi-million pound computer it uses to assist its short-term forecasting for Britain is also one of the four main official sources of data used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to predict global warming.

They've screwed up telling us about what happens next week, and they're using the SAME thing for predicting the next century!
And they've got something to hide, so you know something's going on.

Why would such a thing be labelled "secret" all of a sudden?
What happened to open and honest scientific scrutiny. It's all very well convincing the "me too" crowd, but you have to scientifically dismiss your sceptics, not silence them through lack of information.

The point is greenhouse gases will cause the greenhouse effect.

The sources you are attacking are just statistic gathering ones about how quickly the effect takes place by compiling weather data; the degree of their validity is irrelevant to "whether or not it will" (unless you are looking for that "keep on truckin'" excuse).

As for "global cooling" or whatever, I might as well say "Since some people have believed in UFOs and holy dieties, I should dismiss everything ever believed by any people, ever." Almost a non sequiter and it's hard to see how you, as a person, could end believing in anything but self-serving scepticism. With which there is no argument; it is just a variant on the young child who, no matter what you explain, continues to ask "Why? Why? Why?"...the child is mostly playing his/her game with themself.

Originally Posted by MK27

"Since some people have believed in UFOs and holy dieties, I should dismiss everything ever believed by any people, ever."

This actually sounds like a really good idea

Originally Posted by MK27

As for "global cooling" or whatever, I might as well say "Since some people have believed in UFOs and holy dieties, I should dismiss everything ever believed by any people, ever."

No, but a higher degree of skepticism is definitely in order. Almost everybody that you've ever heard anything from, in science, be it political, economic, biological, or otherwise has probably had something significant to gain by stating what they have... whether it's a promotion, an award, or just to shut the unions up... humans do what they do and say what they say for themselves. This is why scientific prediction in general has had almost as great of an error rate as any major religion text and anyone foolish or bold enough to convince themselves that they live in the time where science is getting everything (or even most things) correct should really be reconsidering the quality of the material they read. I'm quite certain that a great amount of what we consider "fact" today may very well be rebuked fifty to one hundred years from now.

(If the global warming discussion is going to continue, perhaps splitting the thread is in order?)

>> What makes today's predictions any better than back then, apart from being today's predictions?
From your link:

This hypothesis never had significant scientific support

>> Almost everybody that you've ever heard anything from, in science, be it political, economic, biological, or otherwise has probably had something significant to gain by stating what they have. <<

This argument always confused me. I don't doubt that in some cases it's true, but wouldn't it be in someone's best interest to come up with strong scientific evidence that global warming wasn't occurring? If I was trying to make some money, that's where I'd put my energy (and I'm sure people have, but I don't know that they've come up with strong evidence that sways the rest of the scientific community).

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

No, but a higher degree of skepticism is definitely in order. Almost everybody that you've ever heard anything from in science, be it political, economic, biological, or otherwise has probably had something significant to gain by stating what they have said... whether it's a promotion, an award, or just to shut the unions up... humans do what they do and say what they say for themselves.

Yes, and if you were a scientist with any credibility at all now and you stood up and said "Why this global warming is malarky! There is nothing wrong with carbon monoxide!" you could just start collecting cash from any number of corporate sources.

As to who is going to pay you to tell the truth, that is a more ambiguous question. So I would say there is a "need for greater skepticism" but you might want to think about how you deploy it, rather than using that as an excuse to argue about whether the sky is really blue because of the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere.

These are the bumper sticker extremes:
"Be careful you aren't so open minded your brain falls out."
"A closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose."