Some economists are busy trying to rewrite economic history. One such attempt is done by Steven Hansen:
Hansen's thesis is that the current recession began in Q4 2007. This tallies nicely with our emerging Diktator telling us that those who caused the recession must now shut up while the "One We Waited For" nationalizes industry after industry, kills off the old and infirm and sets up (enlarges) his private Army wearing purple and red shirts.
Hansen complains that GDP is not a good measure of the economy, because it is too convoluted to calculate the numbers. So, he sets up another quntity called NIPA: which equals the income of business + individuals + the government. Easier to calculate? It would seem that this is like a three shell game and there are all sorts of opportunities to decide whether an income (of individuals for example) has already been counted once in business or "government income" is counted both in business and individual income. Since, government produces nothing of economic value, assigning a number to "government income" is fictitious anyway. Even so, Hansen's graphic shows that the economy began to contract slightly in Q2 2008 and dove in Q3 when the FED froze the money in the banks. This in spite of the fact that money supply began to drop, countering the trend toward the precipitous drop that occured when the Sep 13, 2008 change in accounting method tied up bank funds.
Mr Hansen's attempt to downplay changes in GDP is no doubt due to a desire to obscure the real changes that took place in 2008: which were that after the Sep 13 "early October surprise" the financial system went into a dive and so did the GDP. No surprise there, 'mark to market' prolonged the Depression and made the government the source of income for a lot of destitute people.
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