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Group may declare recession
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November 23, 2001: 10:34 a.m. ET
Economists meeting to decide if U.S. economy has begun to contract.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A leading economic authority was deliberating Friday whether it would join many on Wall Street and in Washington and declare the U.S. economy in a recession.
Martin Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, said members of the group's business cycle dating committee, were holding a teleconference to discuss the matter. However, he said the group would not announce its decision until Monday at the earliest.
Asked why the committee is meeting Friday, Feldstein said there was "no particular reason."
He said no recent data had inspired the meeting but that earlier this month the group had determined employment may have peaked in March and they figured "it was a good idea for us to have a conversation" about the state of the U.S. economy.
Earlier Friday, The Wall Street Journal, quoting economics professor Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, an NBER member, said the economists likely will conclude that a recession began in March, ending the longest period of growth on record in the United States.
But other members of the group were quoted as saying that was not a foregone conclusion. The group may take a few days to announce its findings, the newspaper said.
The expansion that apparently ended in March would mean the economy grew for exactly 10 years after the last recession ended in the spring of 1991. That would top the previous record stretch of growth, from February 1961 to December 1969, and the average of four years recorded since World War II, the report said.
While definitions of recession vary, the committee considers employment one of the most telling signs, and it peaked in March. But new claims for unemployment benefits have fallen for four straight weeks, a sign that the economy may already be stabilizing.
To keep consumers spending despite mounting job cuts and a rising unemployment rate, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates 10 times this year.
Click here for more on the Fed and rates
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economy, shrank at a 0.4 percent pace in the third quarter and many economists expect it to shrink again in the fourth quarter. While it differs from the bureau's definition, a recession is commonly defined as two straight quarters of GDP contraction. Most economists expect a recovery in the United States next year. 
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