MaxedOutMama
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Rockefeller Publishes First Quarter
This is an interesting one. On the one hand, inflation and legislative adjusted state revenues were down for the third quarter. On the other hand, the situation was not that different from the previous quarter:
Q1 2007: +0.6%You never, ever see negative numbers like that when the country is not in a contraction. Compare to a prior period and look at the graph:
Q2 2007: +2.0%
Q3 2007: -0.8%
Q4 2007: -4.1%
Q1 2008: -5.3%
Q1 2001: +2.6We entered recession between 2nd and 3rd quarters 2007, and we are likely to be in it for some time. Rockefeller data is far more indicative of what is really going on in the economy than official GDP and income figures, which do get revised sharply. Nominal growth was 1.7%, which is far too low even without the inflation adjustment.
Q2 2001: +0.8
Q3 2001: -4.9
Q4 2001: -4.1
Q1 2002: -9.7
We may well get down to -12 ~ -14 adjusted in the fourth quarter 2008 and first quarter 2009, because nominal growth was by far the highest (5.3%) in the northeast in Q1, and in outright decline in the SE and Rockies, and minimal everywhere else. Well, the NE is going to get hammered beginning second half 08, as I mentioned in my last post.
You can download all the archived Rockefeller state revenue data here.
