Word: mccrackens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Arbiter. The more economists ponder whether these and other signs add up to a recession, the more they realize, as chief Presidential Economic Adviser Paul McCracken puts it, "The word itself is not an unambiguously precise term." There is really only one reliable definition: if experts of the National Bureau of Economic Research decide to call a business decline a recession, so shall it be known. But the NBER only identifies recessions long after they have begun, and by a complex process that yields no hard and fast criteria. The behavior of gross national product, industrial production, employment, personal income...
Many economists have adopted as an informal definition of recession a decline in real gross national product-that is, G.N.P. minus the effect of inflation-in two successive quarters. Such a decline has never occurred except during a cycle that the NBER calls a recession. Last week McCracken dismissed the simple definition as "nonsense." Trying to frame a standard so exact, he said, is as "pointless" as trying to determine "the exact minimum number of whiskers that qualify to be called a beard...
...Chairman Wright Patman, an old-time foe of the Fed, that the Texan told Burns. "You fell on your feet like a cat every time." Earlier in the week, Treasury Secretary David Kennedy had predicted that lower rates "may be closer at hand than most people realize." Then Paul McCracken, the President's chief economist, swung the jawbone. In a speech at Yale, he refused to predict when money would become easier, but said that he saw reason "for a modest amount of optimism and hope...
...bond market is the Wall Street figure Economist McCracken most frequently consults. He regards it as a better guide than stocks; when bond yields start going down, he believes that people are regaining their faith in the real value of the dollar. As for the stock market, one of Nixon's economic aides remarked: "Some of these guys on Wall Street made a goddam fortune from inflation; they tripled their money in three years. Do they expect us to bail them out when we try to step on inflation and the market goes...
...policy is working," says Treasury Secretary David Kennedy, echoing the Administration's official line. In his view, it is only a matter of time before price increases become fewer and smaller. Paul McCracken, the President's chief economist, argues that the U.S. can still avoid a recession. Many bankers and businessmen agree, though quite a few of them would not be overly displeased to see a recession. Increasingly, the argument is being heard in boardrooms that employees have become too demanding, too casual in their attitudes toward performance and productivity -and that a recession would alleviate many...