More Perspective

There’s some interesting insight from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis to put The Recession in Perspective. (HT to Marginal Revolution.) My main observation is that with the spin many people put on the recession, you wouldn't think this was the case. As one of my high school teachers used to say, "Einstein told us it was all relative." For most of our students, this is the biggest economic event of their lives. For those of my age, it currently barely ranks in the top five (out of ten events).

I will be interested to see if the authors continue the study. And if the authors do follow it through, how will it all shake out? Do you have any comments to share? How does it feel to you? I recently told a colleague that some aspects of this recession remind me of the 1990 event. Other aspects are closer to the early 1980s, although my memory there may not be as clear.

***UPDATE***
Alex Tabarrock at Marginal Revolution did a little more digging into the Minneapolis data, even goin so far as to contact the folks at the Minneapolis Fed. It seems he had some questions about the information. Here's a post on the follow-up that's worth reading.