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by SamAtt 6068 days ago
No, but it had been going down for a while before that so I'm not sure it counts (http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?series_i...)

The beginning of this is generally considered to be the Collapse of Lehman brothers and the dissolutions of Bear Stearns and Merril Lynch which all happened in Sept. 2008. The Unemployment rate in Aug. '08 was 6.2% but that was already up from 4.7% in Aug. '07.

So actually it was a predicting factor on the way down.
2 comments
enjo 6068 days ago
The collapse of Lehman brothers and Stearns was itself a lagging indicator. The issues had already been pressing all the way back to 2007 (see 'housing bubble'). We had clear signs of a stalling economy well before these companies collapsed. The signal these collapses sent, really, was that this was going to be a deeper recession than we had originally hoped.

I don't claim to understand all of this, but my wife (PhD economics) first started sending me warnings about serious economic issues in late 2007.

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sophacles 6068 days ago
Remember in 2008 when we got tax rebates from Bush? Those were to get the economy going, based on the fact that we were entering a recession. It was a big worry. Unemployment at that point was < 5% too. In fact, I bought my house that summer, when housing prices were on the way down, but before the credit crunch made it impossible to get credit. We were already in a recession then, according to the news at the time anyway.

The collapse of LB and BS et al, is something different, those were a big deal panic, associated with, but not the start of, the recession. They were the worsening of it.

The actually interesting thing here is that we were told about the recession we were in for quite a while before the collapses, then we were told how we just got into a recession because of the collapses. Or have we always been at war with eastasia?

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