So Much for the 'First In, First Out' Theory
Individual Global Investor submits:
I want to be the first to admit that last the conclusions from last week’s article on global trade were wrong. The U.S. has been the first of the major industrialized countries to see its international trade of goods stabilize. Most others have been seeing their trade figures slide further in May and June. However, the release of second quarter GDP figures from Europe last week and Japan yesterday clearly disputes the conclusion that recovery from the recession will be on a first-in, first-out basis.
Recession timing can be a tricky thing to pinpoint which is why in the U.S. a whole committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the NBER, waits more than a year to announce their official conclusions. For the rest of us, the most broadly accepted definition is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in GDP. By this definition, the recession ended by 2Q’09 in countries like Japan, Germany, and France while it continued on in the United States and the United Kingdom.
