Steve Landefeld
Appearances
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
We released them. And that's when Congress specifically forbid our doing any more work on this stuff and proposed a 20 percent cut in our budget.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
And they pulled their support. I learned a very painful lesson that all politics are local.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Well, you know, I would have thought, you know, going into that, oh, I'll be really, really brave here. And I'll just say, you know, if you do this, you know, I'm leaving or something. You can't suppress this stuff. But when it came down to it and I thought it through, I thought and talked to a lot of people about it, it wasn't going anywhere anyway.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
So there was no point in inflicting that kind of harm on the Bureau because it probably just made it worse.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Yeah, well, if you look at table two in the current press release.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
You subtract line 50 from line 1 and you've got the number he wants. There you go. Technically pretty easy, just arithmetic, right? Well, then if you want to be more serious about it,
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
There's 11 different variants of GDP in there already. Add another one and cite it up in your first line. GDP did this. It was buoyed by the government sector or pulled down by it. And private GDP did this.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Right. Yeah. And that's historically the way these things have tended to be solved.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
If it were dramatically changed, I'd be very concerned. You know, we haven't talked about it, but a big, big issue behind all this is the autonomy of a nation's statistics. They have to be trusted. They have to be objective. And if there's even the perception that people are manipulating the numbers to produce particular outcomes of interest to them, that could be catastrophic.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
That's easy. My kids used to ask me that, and I said, I'm not going to do it. No, I kept refusing them until one of them actually became an economist.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
GDP is a statistic that captures all final transactions in the U.S. economy, buying and selling of goods and services within a one-year period.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Y equals C plus I plus G plus X minus M. Got it?
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Never directly, but indirectly, yes. Leading case was a president who...
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Experts agree it's a much more accurate measure of real GDP growth. But what it's going to do is it's going to raise growth prior to your administration and lower it after you came into office.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Yeah, right. So the joke is, he hands it back to him and he says, and I want you to do something about that. They walk out. Not really much discussion of what's going on here. And they get back to the office and they look at it. And it's scrawled in, this is, and they couldn't figure out what the last word was. They were thinking, is it? Anyway, it turns out it said, this is crap.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
You know what? He bought the whole thing. He was great. He says, we're doing it.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
He's a god and I'm... I'm a foot soldier in the Roman army.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Let me go back to the most basic one, which is the computer.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
Greenspan was expanding the money supply faster than some people thought warranted. And a lot of people later on said, see, we told you. But any event. One thing that would allow him to do that would be if we were underestimating productivity growth in the services sector, then that would sort of justify what he was doing or what the Fed was doing.
Planet Money
Can we just change how we measure GDP?
And so he wanted us, hopefully, to go out and find a lot more productivity growth out there by correctly measuring the service industries. And we did find a lot, but it was all legit.