3 ms·

Money still money

• LatteLazy 6y ago
  I'm not sure that's true given the current printing press outputs. And even if it is true, the link to official GDP figures is very weak. And even if it weren't, you only have half the GDP figures: we're down X now but we will be up Y when we re-open. If Y>X then we're laughing. And even if all this were not the case, what price a human life and is it a bad thing if for 6m people spend more time at home with their kids being happy but don't spend much? That's the issue here. One data point, of spurious accuracy, which we fully know and expect to be an outlier is being used to imply an economic trend and that trend is being extended to social trend. I could just as well say "the stock market is up so we are clearly fine"...
• OJFord 6y ago
  Well.. 'recession' is defined as two consecutive quarterly contractions in GDP. The argument (and I'm not taking a view) is that this is not a good measure for a year like this; that the consumer demand is there, but that the supply is artificially reduced or extinguished (in some sectors more than others). A proponent of this argument would say it's meaningless - or at least not helpful - to worry about two (or more) quarters of contraction, only to have them followed by stupendous 'growth' once everything's OK and the hibernating demand has somewhere to go. Someone more critical of it might say Well yes, 'or more', for how long can we hibernate?