Wednesday 14 March 2012

The 'In Fifth Year of Recession' Myth
The media are full of the claim that Greece is now in its fifth year of recession. Started by various Greek finance officials, this canard has been picked up and credulously repeated by BusinessWeek and Reuters, and many others. In truth Greece has been in recession, as customarily measured, for 12 quaters, or three neat years.

Greek real GDP  (seasonally adjusted) grew until the fourth quarter of 2008. It fell again in the first quarter of 2009. Two succesively quarterly falls is usually deemed to constitute a recession. Thus Greece could be said to be in recession from the beginning of 2009.

That is 3 years.

(Data is sourced from http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx)
 

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