5 ms·

When the news media starts saying "recession" it increases the chances of there being a recession.

by gerbilly 7y ago

mieseratte 7y ago
Fear sells, but who's buying?
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Hedge funds and similar firms do almost all of the exchange volume. If the media talks people in to selling and nothing happens, we will see a humongous transfer of wealth to institutional investors.
luckylion 7y ago
The idea of free and independent media is too important to throw it out because it may make a recession hit a bit earlier. Trust in media is low as it is. Openly lying and manipulating, even with good intentions, will remove what's left.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Historically the media has been prone to hysterics, even to the point of cherry-picking stories just to build up the feeling of everything pointing in the same direction. The media sometimes also reports the news. The fact that it's a toss-up about whether or not the media is full of it this time is another contributing factor to the whole "the stock market is random" theory. A riskless return above inflation is infinitely valuable, because you can create unlimited amounts of new money by taking out loans in order to exploit it. So, unless someone is out there making infinite money, nobody is sure about the pending recession.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    Bad news is good news, there's no conspiracy there to push a narrative that everything is going to hell. It's what sells. If you want them to either not print those or even print "everything is fine and dandy", you need a conspiracy (because it won't work if you make it public), and you can only do that so many times before nobody believes anything you make them publish. At some point the people realize that, whatever you say, the chocolate rations have been reduced.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrs235 7y ago
      Part of the issue is we have a press that isn't concerned with the truth. It's concerned with money. It's corporately owned and commercial focused. It doesn't help that almost all the "local" TV [news] stations, radio stations, and newspapers are owned and controlled by a handful of corporations.
      - luckylion 7y ago
        Certainly, there are many incentives that help break the system, and the corporate media is one of them. I don't see a good alternative though, state funding doesn't really work that great either, and relying on donations doesn't sound like a plan if you want to be able to tell your readers things they might not want to hear.
        jrs235 7y ago
        Well, since no true free market exists... reintroduce regulations that prevent media consolidation and conglomerates...
        luckylion 7y ago
        Would that change "bad news is good news" though? Even individuals on Twitter will gravitate to the most uncharitable understanding, the most outrageous version of events etc because it will generate the most attention. I'm not so sure we can rely on "journalists will not fall for the allure of fame" if we remove the corporate interest. My opinion is somewhere in this direction: there are some publications that are targeted at professionals that won't play the hysteria-game, because professionals don't need entertainment, they want information to base business decisions on. For the general public, "the news" doesn't really matter for most of their decisions ("Hong Kong is heating up ... how does this affect my dinner plans for Thursday?"), so they primarily get entertainment from the news, and when the companies give them what they want, you get what we have.
- gerbilly 7y ago
  > The idea of free and independent media is too important to throw it out because it may make a recession hit a bit earlier. Who's suggesting that? It might also be that the media starts talking recession after picking up some real world data that is predictive of recessions.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > Who's suggesting that? I understood the parent comment to imply they shouldn't talk about recession because it would increase the likelihood of recession. What you suggest sounds plausible. Most journalists aren't revealing anything, they are just echoing developing trends to a wider audience. If journalists are talking about recession more, other people are probably talking about recession more to journalists.
turtlecloud 7y ago
So are we trusting the media now? Or is it all fake news? Not sure what you guys are doing but I will still be buying. When everyone says recession it’s most likely baloney. Events like 2008 and 1929 and 1987 come out of nowhere as a surprise, not as a warning news announcement on MSNBC (seriously just inverse everything they say )
- paul7986 7y ago
  That's what I'm thinking and wondered are all red and blue news outlets reporting this the same? Is it just the ones with the opposite political agenda? Because the boon economy we been experiencing is a huge positive for the person in office now and their possible re-election.
  - jerf 7y ago
    The economy bleeding is the economy leading. Even if it isn't, it's still a more exciting story than "everything's probably fine for now". I believe there are plenty of people who would in a heartbeat spark a recession for millions of people as long as it let them get rid of Trump. In the spirit of "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic", the cognitively-available benefit of getting rid of Trump would dominate the vague and diffuse "some people somewhere might get hurt" that would entail. (And that is granting them the benefit of the doubt that they'd even care about it if they could managed to grapple with it, a theory I don't particularly have a lot of evidence for.) However, it's too early for that. If a recession hits now, there's time for the economy to recover before the election and the recession to just be a memory in our ever-increasingly news cycle driver news economy. "What recession? Oh, you mean the one from 150 news cycles ago? Who cares?" "They" would want it in full swing somewhere around the election, and would settle for the worst bits being a month or two before the election. I tend to think this is just the media echo chamber picking up an idea.
    - akhilcacharya 7y ago
      I'm old enough to remember Trump claiming that the economy was in shambles in 2015 and 2016 when it isn't remarkably different than it is now. Almost as though that was a big part of his message! Bring on the gloom and doom, it's not much different than what we had from 2014 onwards.
raxxorrax 7y ago
Since the economy behaves cyclic for unknown reasons, recessions should be viewed analogous to bad weather. An inevitable phenomenon that reoccurs regularly.
throwawaylolx 7y ago
Is there a study supporting this?
- jrs235 7y ago
  It's a self fulfilling prophesy. People hear about a pending recession, so to prepare they tighten their wallets and start spending a bit less so they can save a little to weather the possible storm. This reduced velocity in money turnover and less buying leads to the recession. I don't have a study to point you to. I would just be doing what you too can do, first try googling for one. Just because a study, peer reviewed, professional, yada yada yada doesn't exist, does not mean it not a real phenomena. (Please don't read this last bit as snark or personally... it's for the few that completely dismiss ideas or things unless some study supports it). A study would be nice. Who's going to conduct it? Who's going to peer review it? How will we identify any conflicts of interest? Regardless, I'd love to have this more formally researched and studied.
ezzzzz 7y ago
Didn't read the article (paywall) but I have to agree with your sentiment. I constantly hear people talking about a recession for no reason other than 'we're due'. To me, some of these indicators (layoffs, less consumption of luxury goods) just read as the new normal. The folks mentioned have likely been dealing with the same uncertainty since the fallout of 2008. In the US, worker's rights have been decimated by laws like Right-to-work. Every corporation works to keep the dividends flowing to shareholders while the lower and lower-middle class bleed. How hard is it to grok that the working class ARE the economy. Consumption and growth will always be stifled as long as capital is kept from those who actually spend it.
- briandear 7y ago
  How does right-to-work “decimate” anything? How does it “protect” my rights when I would be forced to join a union and pay dues just to get a job? That’s ridiculous. Perhaps people should be forced to join a church? Just as crazy right? I should not have to join or pay an organization in order to get a job. That’s extortion. Unions aren’t banned in right to work states — workers just have the freedom to decide if they want to join those organizations. How is freedom of choice a bad thing? You would force people into unions? Isn’t that totalitarianism? Why would I want my wages collectively bargained anyway? I am far above average in my particular field, why would I want to be paid at the average? The only workers unions benefit are the below average workers. They necessarily harm the top to “help” the bottom. Aren’t unions the ones that created rubber rooms? Aren’t they the reason it costs so much to get any public infrastructure built in union states? Join a union if you want. That’s what is great about America, there is still (barely) a thing called freedom. However it’s fading fast with socialist/communist/leftist/totalitarian ideology catching on among people that are too young to remember Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1970s or who ignore Venezuela now or are under the impression that Sweden is a socialist success story. [1] [1] https://reason.com/video/stossel-sweden-not-a-socialist-success/ https://reason.com/video/stossel-sweden-not-a-socialist-succ...
  - deftnerd 7y ago
    Even if your expertise in your fields results in you making 30% more than your peers, collective bargaining raises the base level. It sets a regional wage for a category of work that makes up the baseline pay for all other workers in that category in that region, you included. Without it, wages become a race to the bottom with companies all attempting to compete with each other on hiring workers for the lowest cost rather than the highest dependability.

When the news media starts saying "recession" it increases the chances of there being a recession.

mieseratte 7y ago

Fear sells, but who's buying?

whatshisface 7y ago
Hedge funds and similar firms do almost all of the exchange volume. If the media talks people in to selling and nothing happens, we will see a humongous transfer of wealth to institutional investors.

luckylion 7y ago

The idea of free and independent media is too important to throw it out because it may make a recession hit a bit earlier. Trust in media is low as it is. Openly lying and manipulating, even with good intentions, will remove what's left.

whatshisface 7y ago
Historically the media has been prone to hysterics, even to the point of cherry-picking stories just to build up the feeling of everything pointing in the same direction. The media sometimes also reports the news. The fact that it's a toss-up about whether or not the media is full of it this time is another contributing factor to the whole "the stock market is random" theory. A riskless return above inflation is infinitely valuable, because you can create unlimited amounts of new money by taking out loans in order to exploit it. So, unless someone is out there making infinite money, nobody is sure about the pending recession.
- luckylion 7y ago
  Bad news is good news, there's no conspiracy there to push a narrative that everything is going to hell. It's what sells. If you want them to either not print those or even print "everything is fine and dandy", you need a conspiracy (because it won't work if you make it public), and you can only do that so many times before nobody believes anything you make them publish. At some point the people realize that, whatever you say, the chocolate rations have been reduced.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrs235 7y ago
    Part of the issue is we have a press that isn't concerned with the truth. It's concerned with money. It's corporately owned and commercial focused. It doesn't help that almost all the "local" TV [news] stations, radio stations, and newspapers are owned and controlled by a handful of corporations.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      Certainly, there are many incentives that help break the system, and the corporate media is one of them. I don't see a good alternative though, state funding doesn't really work that great either, and relying on donations doesn't sound like a plan if you want to be able to tell your readers things they might not want to hear.
      - jrs235 7y ago
        Well, since no true free market exists... reintroduce regulations that prevent media consolidation and conglomerates...
        luckylion 7y ago
        Would that change "bad news is good news" though? Even individuals on Twitter will gravitate to the most uncharitable understanding, the most outrageous version of events etc because it will generate the most attention. I'm not so sure we can rely on "journalists will not fall for the allure of fame" if we remove the corporate interest. My opinion is somewhere in this direction: there are some publications that are targeted at professionals that won't play the hysteria-game, because professionals don't need entertainment, they want information to base business decisions on. For the general public, "the news" doesn't really matter for most of their decisions ("Hong Kong is heating up ... how does this affect my dinner plans for Thursday?"), so they primarily get entertainment from the news, and when the companies give them what they want, you get what we have.
gerbilly 7y ago
> The idea of free and independent media is too important to throw it out because it may make a recession hit a bit earlier. Who's suggesting that? It might also be that the media starts talking recession after picking up some real world data that is predictive of recessions.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Who's suggesting that? I understood the parent comment to imply they shouldn't talk about recession because it would increase the likelihood of recession. What you suggest sounds plausible. Most journalists aren't revealing anything, they are just echoing developing trends to a wider audience. If journalists are talking about recession more, other people are probably talking about recession more to journalists.

turtlecloud 7y ago

So are we trusting the media now? Or is it all fake news? Not sure what you guys are doing but I will still be buying. When everyone says recession it’s most likely baloney. Events like 2008 and 1929 and 1987 come out of nowhere as a surprise, not as a warning news announcement on MSNBC (seriously just inverse everything they say )

paul7986 7y ago
That's what I'm thinking and wondered are all red and blue news outlets reporting this the same? Is it just the ones with the opposite political agenda? Because the boon economy we been experiencing is a huge positive for the person in office now and their possible re-election.
- jerf 7y ago
  The economy bleeding is the economy leading. Even if it isn't, it's still a more exciting story than "everything's probably fine for now". I believe there are plenty of people who would in a heartbeat spark a recession for millions of people as long as it let them get rid of Trump. In the spirit of "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic", the cognitively-available benefit of getting rid of Trump would dominate the vague and diffuse "some people somewhere might get hurt" that would entail. (And that is granting them the benefit of the doubt that they'd even care about it if they could managed to grapple with it, a theory I don't particularly have a lot of evidence for.) However, it's too early for that. If a recession hits now, there's time for the economy to recover before the election and the recession to just be a memory in our ever-increasingly news cycle driver news economy. "What recession? Oh, you mean the one from 150 news cycles ago? Who cares?" "They" would want it in full swing somewhere around the election, and would settle for the worst bits being a month or two before the election. I tend to think this is just the media echo chamber picking up an idea.
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    I'm old enough to remember Trump claiming that the economy was in shambles in 2015 and 2016 when it isn't remarkably different than it is now. Almost as though that was a big part of his message! Bring on the gloom and doom, it's not much different than what we had from 2014 onwards.

raxxorrax 7y ago

Since the economy behaves cyclic for unknown reasons, recessions should be viewed analogous to bad weather. An inevitable phenomenon that reoccurs regularly.

throwawaylolx 7y ago

Is there a study supporting this?

jrs235 7y ago
It's a self fulfilling prophesy. People hear about a pending recession, so to prepare they tighten their wallets and start spending a bit less so they can save a little to weather the possible storm. This reduced velocity in money turnover and less buying leads to the recession. I don't have a study to point you to. I would just be doing what you too can do, first try googling for one. Just because a study, peer reviewed, professional, yada yada yada doesn't exist, does not mean it not a real phenomena. (Please don't read this last bit as snark or personally... it's for the few that completely dismiss ideas or things unless some study supports it). A study would be nice. Who's going to conduct it? Who's going to peer review it? How will we identify any conflicts of interest? Regardless, I'd love to have this more formally researched and studied.

ezzzzz 7y ago

Didn't read the article (paywall) but I have to agree with your sentiment. I constantly hear people talking about a recession for no reason other than 'we're due'. To me, some of these indicators (layoffs, less consumption of luxury goods) just read as the new normal. The folks mentioned have likely been dealing with the same uncertainty since the fallout of 2008. In the US, worker's rights have been decimated by laws like Right-to-work. Every corporation works to keep the dividends flowing to shareholders while the lower and lower-middle class bleed. How hard is it to grok that the working class ARE the economy. Consumption and growth will always be stifled as long as capital is kept from those who actually spend it.

briandear 7y ago
How does right-to-work “decimate” anything? How does it “protect” my rights when I would be forced to join a union and pay dues just to get a job? That’s ridiculous. Perhaps people should be forced to join a church? Just as crazy right? I should not have to join or pay an organization in order to get a job. That’s extortion. Unions aren’t banned in right to work states — workers just have the freedom to decide if they want to join those organizations. How is freedom of choice a bad thing? You would force people into unions? Isn’t that totalitarianism? Why would I want my wages collectively bargained anyway? I am far above average in my particular field, why would I want to be paid at the average? The only workers unions benefit are the below average workers. They necessarily harm the top to “help” the bottom. Aren’t unions the ones that created rubber rooms? Aren’t they the reason it costs so much to get any public infrastructure built in union states? Join a union if you want. That’s what is great about America, there is still (barely) a thing called freedom. However it’s fading fast with socialist/communist/leftist/totalitarian ideology catching on among people that are too young to remember Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1970s or who ignore Venezuela now or are under the impression that Sweden is a socialist success story. [1] [1] https://reason.com/video/stossel-sweden-not-a-socialist-success/ https://reason.com/video/stossel-sweden-not-a-socialist-succ...
- deftnerd 7y ago
  Even if your expertise in your fields results in you making 30% more than your peers, collective bargaining raises the base level. It sets a regional wage for a category of work that makes up the baseline pay for all other workers in that category in that region, you included. Without it, wages become a race to the bottom with companies all attempting to compete with each other on hiring workers for the lowest cost rather than the highest dependability.