So the gubmnt. has borrowed in excess of 500bl to create 50bl worth of supposed growth...nice...My blood was boiling waking up to this nosense on R4 this morning, does no one in the meeja ever question the credibility of the NIESR? Oh they sound important; stick the words; economic, research, institute, social and national in a brand and it'll work. Have a look at their council of management constituent members and you'll quickly realise they've been 'Mandlesoned'. It's a new Lab sponsored think tank, no more no less.
Also pay attention to the fact that they have created a new methodology, diverting from the ONS which they are trying to drown out. This new methodology will presumably give more weight to service led production...
NIESR - Council of Management
Interestingly the front page of the site has an interesting graph comparing recessions and where we're at, excerpt from their press release today down below, which beggars belief as to how it can be translated as "they think it's all over" ;
"Our monthly estimates of GDP suggest that output fell by 1.5% in the three months ending in April, after the decline of 1.9% in the first calendar quarter of this year. The estimates for April themselves point to output stopping falling. Monthly data are erratic so it would be wrong to make too much of this. Nevertheless, it is the first time the monthly GDP estimate has not fallen since April of last year.
This improvement means that the output fall since the start of the recession is no longer as sharp as that in the 1929 recession. It is, however, still greater than that of the recession which started in 1979.
Our track record in producing early estimates of GDP suggests that our projection for the most recent three-month period has a standard error of 0.1-0.2% point when compared to the first estimate produced by the Office for National Statistics. This comparison can be made only for complete calendar quarters. Outside calendar quarters the figures are less reliable than this and they are also likely to be less accurate in the current disturbed economic circumstances.
A paper describing the methodology used to produce the data was published in the February 2005 volume of the Economic Journal. From April until October 2006 our estimates were computed using the Index of Services published by ONS. However this monthly series shows considerable volatility which has caused us some problems in estimating GDP.
From our November 2006 press release we have therefore reverted to using a model of private services output based on indicator variables.
This means that, while all our figures for calendar quarters are fully coherent with ONS data, our estimates of monthly private service output are not. The series can be thought of as indicating the underlying value of the ONS series.
*
This is the June part press release, May is the one up top;
ECONOMIC STABILISATION CONFIRMED. OUTPUT RISING IN APRIL AND MAY
Our monthly estimates of GDP suggest that output fell by 0.9% in the three months ending in May, after the decline of 1.5% in the three months ending in April. However, the monthly profile points to March as having been the trough of the depression, with output rising in April and May. The monthly figures are inevitably erratic but the picture is coherent with the broader picture of stabilisation which has emerged since we first suggested that the output had stopped falling in our GDP release on 13th May.
The calculations in this press release reflect the announcement by ONS on 5th June that construction output had fallen by 9% in the first quarter of 2009 and that, other things being equal, this implied that the GDP estimate for 2009Q1 would be revised down by 0.3%. This means that our GDP estimates for 2009 are not consistent with the latest published national accounts, which do not reflect this 9% fall in construction output.
Our track record in producing early estimates of GDP suggests that our projection for the most recent three-month period has a standard error of 0.1-0.2% point when compared to the first estimate produced by the Office for National Statistics. This comparison can be made only for complete calendar quarters. Outside calendar quarters the figures are less reliable than this and they are also likely to be less accurate in the current disturbed economic circumstances.
A paper describing the methodology used to produce the data was published in the February 2005 volume of the Economic Journal. From April until October 2006 our estimates were computed using the Index of Services published by ONS. However this monthly series shows considerable volatility which has caused us some problems in estimating GDP. From our November 2006 press release we have therefore reverted to using a model of private services output based on indicator variables. This means that, while all our figures for calendar quarters are fully coherent with ONS data, our estimates of monthly private service output are not. The series can be thought of as indicating the underlying value of the ONS series.
