Recessions Are Not As Sneaky as Austin Goolsbee Tells You

Austin Goolsbee warned readers in a NYT column that a recession can just sneak up on us with very little warning. Strangely, he picks the 2001 recession as his example.

The 2001 recession seems a bad example, since it had a pretty clear cause, the collapse of the 1990s stock bubble. The tech heavy NASDAQ had declined by more than 40 percent by the start of the recession in March of 2001 from its bubble peak in 2000 and the S&P 500 had fallen by almost 20 percent. Both were also on a clear...