Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Dallas Fed — How Bad Was It? The Costs and Consequences of the 2007–09 Financial Crisis

Abstract 
The 2007-09 Financial crisis was associated with a huge loss of economic output and financial wealth, psychological consequences and skill atrophy from extended unemployment, an increase in government intervention, and other significant costs. Assuming the financial crisis is to blame for these associated ills, an estimate of its cost is needed to weigh against the cost of policies intended to prevent similar episodes. We conservatively estimate that 40 to 90 percent of one year's output ($6 trillion to $14 trillion, the equivalent of $50,000 to $120,000 for every U.S. household) was foregone due to the 2007-09 recession. We also provide several alternative measures of lost consumption, national trauma, and other negative consequences of the worst recession since the 1930s. This more comprehensive evaluation of factors suggests that what the U.S. gave up as a result of the crisis is likely greater than the value of one year's output.
Dallas Fed Staff Papers (July 2013)
How Bad Was It? The Costs and Consequences of the 2007–09 Financial Crisis
Tyler Atkinson, David Luttrell and Harvey Rosenblum

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Perhaps someone can explain how a permanent loss of output and incomes helps markets to clear. To put it in Austrian terms, we've got a pile of gold that we add to every year. One day we take a year's worth of gold and throw it into the depths of the sea, which improves the economy by . . . making it poorer.

I suppose one could put it in terms of social darwinism, that the strong survive and the weak perish, but that's one hell of an assumption and it doesn't tell us how this is a long-term economic benefit. Not does that even address the social damage and injury to development of human capital, which is always ignored.

Matt Franko said...

Ben,

No it makes no sense at all.

This is a textbook breakdown of leadership/authority imo.

This is what happens when govt disengages and lets it all up to the "free market" so-called, it cant and doesnt work mathematically as eventually the govt $NFA flows reaching the net liability cohort becomes insufficient for that cohort to be able to service the expanded liabilities.

Monetary policy only exacerbates the problem as the liability cohort's interest rate obligation increases till finally BOOM!

rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

Ben, the ownership class sees it as a failure of the labor market to clear because of wage rigidity. so the workers have to be beaten down so they will accept lower wages. When the labor market clears at a wage low enough to bring forth investment, then goods markets will clear, too, due to Say's law that there cannot be a general glut in goods markets.

It's a useful fantasy to reduce labor bargaining power by beating workers into submission.

Unknown said...

How did capital and labor become distinct in the first place?