Comparative Crises

Absolutely essential reading over at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis blog where Josh updates the Reinhardt and Rogoff data on comparative crises.

He shows this graph which I have also been showing from time to time to give some perspective on the seriousness of the current recession relative to US recessions past.  Ouch:

But how does the current US crisis compare to other serious crises around the world?  Here is a comparative graph:

As you can see, our crisis is not at all exceptional.  And look how long it took the other crises to resolve themselves.  Lost decade, anyone?  Go check out the full post.

A Look at Oregon's Economy from the OEA

I have been very busy lately as you can see by the length of my posts.  But I have been quite remiss in not directing readers over to Josh Lehner's always excellent posts at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

Here are three recent posts that are well worth a read:

First, it turns out he beat me to a post on the international GDP comparisons - his is much better. Not strictly an Oregon economic issue, but as Oregon is in the US it does correlate.

Second, there is this post and a follow-up on Oregon's relative performance on jobs.  In the graph below Oregon is red, Washington is blue and the US average is black.

Third, there is an update on the Oregon Index of Leading Indicators.

I'll be talking about some of this tonight on KGW's "Live @ 7" show.