Or, a post Steven Kopitz.
figure 1: Loans and leases in bank credit for all commercial banks, in billions of dollars, sa (blue) and billions Ch. 2012, sa (tan), on log scale. The real series PCE price index fell. NBER defines the peak-to-recession date in shades of gray. Sources: Federal Reserve via FRED, Series TOTLL, BEA via FRED, NBER, and author’s calculations.
In the run-up to the 2007 recession, both nominal and real loan growth declined.As of July (real) and August 17 (nominal), the growth rate was rise. (note that since I’ve plotted both series on a log scale, an increasing slope indicates an increasing growth rate; this is a property of the log, Jim Hamilton has been highlighted in the past).
I welcome any cogent, data-based argument for why we should consider ourselves in a recession in August (or the first half of the year), from the usual suspects.
