31 ms·

US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

176 points by mrep 4y ago

ramesh31 4y ago
So it’s official now
- iamricks 4y ago
  According to the White House, it is not [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/07/21/how-do-economists-determine-whether-the-economy-is-in-a-recession/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/07/21/...
  - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    Kind of amazing how this administration isn’t getting the kind of ridicule that would be expected if the previous administration tried to deny a recession was happening according to the objective definition by including a subjective qualifier. Is this not the same thing as ‘alternate facts’?
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      What conclusion are you trying to draw from this subjective view?
      - pgrote 4y ago
        That the definition of a recession has always been 2 quarters of negative GDP. The administration now believes there is nuance in the numbers, so what was the accepted definition in the past is no longer. The fact the media on whole has decided it's ok to redefine a commonly accepted definition when the administration promotes it lends itself to the media being a mouthpiece for the administration. I am willing to understand nuance and a changing definition, as I am sure there are parts of the economy people are learning to deal with. Gig workers, workers headed back from retirement and more. This doesn't even touch on the self fulfilling prophecy of hearing that the country is in a recession. I am less willing to accept a change in a short timeframe and right before numbers are released.
        chrisco255 4y ago
        > This doesn't even touch on the self fulfilling prophecy of hearing that the country is in a recession. That's not how recessions work. There is always people predicting a recession and always people predicting a turnaround or growth. It's quite simple, however, to engineer a recession when you raise interest rates for such a heavily indebted economy.
        pgrote 4y ago
        >That's not how recessions work. I am unsure the point you are making. My point was related to mindset and I should have clarified. If a group of people, normal non economic expert citizens, believe a recession is here they change their behavior. The media plays a part in amplifying it. At that point it doesn't matter what is happening at a macro economic level. I am for introducing nuance to the judgement of a recession or not. I am not for doing it right before numbers are released the admin saying, "Well, there is nuance in the determination" before the numbers are released. At best all you are doing is introducing confusion to the non economic expert citizens and at worst you are attempting to gaslight people. I hope that helps explain my thoughts.
        NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
        >That the definition of a recession has always been 2 quarters of negative GDP. Well, if you want to be specific, the NBER (which calls the game on what is a recession or not) defines it as "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months." The "two quarters of declining real GDP" (GDP increased by 7.8% in nominal terms) is the pop-economics yardstick. Are you aware we had a recession in 2001? And yet that managed to happen without having two consecutive quarters of negative GDP.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        kevstev 4y ago
        I mean I hear you on "changing the definition" from the commonly accepted two quarters of declining GDP numbers- though that was never actually official, you are mistaken about that- the NBER is the "official" source and they declare it based on a range of factors that there is some subjectiveness to- its not a direct formula. However, wouldn't you agree there is nuance here? In Q4, GDP rose 6.9%, a number so big that we haven't seen that in decades- it appears around the early 1980s was the last time we saw those kinds of numbers. There has been a lot of whipsaw effects as we get out of covid- supply chains are all over the place, companies placing orders to get goods in to avoid snarls, only to now find that demand for goods, which boomed during the pandemic, has now eased as people have reverted to spending on going out and traveling, etc... There seems to be a lot of mismatch in supply and demand again. The unemployment rate is at 3.6%- an astonishingly low number- these lows were last seen in the 1960s and 1970s. On the flipside, inflation is high, gas prices are high and that hurts a lot of people- I live in a city, so this is mostly irrelevant and driven by forces out of anyone in the US govt's control. There is evidence of some rockier times ahead, but when I think "recession" I think of a lot more pain than what we are currently experiencing.
      - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
        The news media is not nearly as objective as they claim to be. And, they exercise a considerable amount of discretion when it comes to either amplifying a potential controversy or downplaying it.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
        >”You beclown yourself by believing there is or has ever been an objective definition. There is not and has never been.” Okay, consider myself beclowned then. So how did economists define all of the previous recessions on record? I know that ‘a recession’ is not a scientific measurement, it is a conventional definition. But don’t you find it odd that the administration wants to jettison the conventional definition when it applies to the economy under their leadership? Right before the midterms, no less?
      - collegeburner 4y ago
        a lot of economists use 2 consecutive quarters negative bc 1. the business cycle committee is slow af 2. they only cover the U.S. so we gotta have something a bit consistent across countries
      - bumby 4y ago
        Their procedure is subjective, but there is still a standardized measure of convenience, no? Just like there is an "official kilogram". We can say, "That's an objective measurement of weight on Earth" but it's not. It's the measurement of the standard kilogram in France. And that "objective" measure can change [1]. It doesn't mean there isn't a consensus on what a kilogram is. Yellen was on Meet the Press last week explaining there is a difference between the "official" measure of a recession and the "two quarters of negative growth" heuristic. That's not to say that politicians can't, or won't, play wordsmith games. [1]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070921110735.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070921110735.h...
        jeffbee 4y ago
        The kilogram is a quite poor analogy. The GDP is not an objective indicator of recession for the exact reasons you see around you right now. Contraction of economic activity caused by supply bottlenecks doesn’t fit the pattern of recession. The labor situation is still white hot, prices are going up etc.
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      Soon people will start disappearing from photos, back to the future style.
      - mokanfar 4y ago
        Or Stalin Style.
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      It’s because the media leans democrat. But make no mistake Fox News, BBC, and other moderate or right leaning news sources will call this a recession. The news has for the most part has not called out Biden’s many missteps. Not even John Oliver is making fun of it.
      - throwawaycuriou 4y ago
        Oliver's most recent ditty did roast Biden remarking 'I can taste it. I think he could've done more to roast previous administration policies.
      - Der_Einzige 4y ago
        Oh man if you think the BBC is even "moderate" than I have a bridge to sell you.
        systemvoltage 4y ago
        Yes, BBC isn't moderate just like NPR isn't moderate anymore. May be in the 20th century, BBC and NPR were neutral. But, that's clearly and indisputedly not true anymore. They're all left leaning.
    - collegeburner 4y ago
      i don't much like the former guy but there's def a slant. i'm pretty sure joe is this close sharpieing in "no" in front of "recession" on his slides. up until literally 2 weeks ago the media was on about the "biden boom" (lmao)
    - refurb 4y ago
      That’s because it’s not politically convenient to hold to that definition. When the other party is in the Whitehouse it will be though. “It’s not about what’s true, it’s what you can get people to believe.”
    - boredumb 4y ago
      It's fairly obvious there are political bias in american media and always has been. If your party is hostile to increasing federal government or regulatory capture you will be under a microscope and even sacrifice some credibility to attack you, otherwise you can bumble around, redefine common terms, deflect and mislead and have the entirety of relevant and 'trusted' media sources run cover for you indefinitely.
      - weberer 4y ago
        >and always has been Even just 15 years ago it was nowhere this overt or coordinated. The turning point seems to be shortly after JournoList and CabalList started when different independent media organizations began to collude to push a unified "narrative" rather than the truth.
      - Workaccount2 4y ago
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        hedora 4y ago
        In fairness, the "free from government" party has direct ties to foreign powers that are openly trying to drive us to a civil war. Taking away bodily autonomy is just a minor skirmish; and the means justify the ends, after all. Wait till next year when the sodomy and birth control laws start to pass, along with the plans to erect border checkpoints within the US to prevent people from entering and leaving certain states. Those are enabled by existing supreme court rulings. They've already taken up a case for next year that will allow state legislatures (that are already controlled via gerrymandering, and often elected by a minority) to just ignore vote tallies and appoint whoever they want. I'm curious to see who the military sides with during the inevitable 2024 coup. Last time, they made it clear they would remove Trump by force if needed. Presumably they're not becoming more loyal to him, given that he's out of office, but it will be dicey when they have to choose between ending democracy in the US or overriding the supreme court and also the house or senate.
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      > Kind of anazing... Get used to it. We're back to the status quo (of incompetent media). In fact, it was the same for the previous admin, just in a different way. The System doesn't like outsiders. If you haven't paid your dues, sucked up, kissed the ring, etc. then you're marginalized. Put another way, how would it look if someone with no experience was decently effective? Say about as effective as the current highly experienced (politician) that's POTUS? I'm no fan of Don T, but given humam nature and The System, he was doomed to "fail" no matter what. As in, perception is reality (and most people now have a bias that isn't going to change).
      - chiefalchemist 4y ago
        It's worth adding - especially for the down voters - that prior to leaving The Daily Show, Jon Stewart was the most trusted source for news for a fair percentage of the population. The channel for TDS was on...Comedy Central. Believing in the mainstream media is the adult equivalent of believing in Santa Claus.
    - jddddd 4y ago
      - jddddd 4y ago
        pgrote 4y ago
        >don't understand what NBER is. There is a consideration that NBER isn't the issue. yes you are correct, they make a determination. I think the difference this time is that you have what was commonly accepted among normal people that 2 quarters negative meant recession. This time there is pushback against it. I think the hang up is more political than technical. When the opposing party controls the white house there wouldn't be broad support for "let's wait and let NBER make a determination." Hope that helps somewhat.
    - everdrive 4y ago
      I believe they are getting quite a bit of ridicule for it.
      - shusaku 4y ago
        The announcement was like an hour ago and we’re already trying to measure the amount of ridicule?
    - MattGaiser 4y ago
      But it is not the objective definition: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jul/27/instagram-posts/no-white-house-didnt-change-definition-recession/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jul/27/instagram-...
    - jasonlotito 4y ago
      No. They are basing it off facts. The NBER is the one who defines a recessions. They haven't done so (that I'm aware of) as of right now. It might be that it will eventually be the case, but the arbitrator of this hasn't ruled on it. Calling it a recession officially now would be the alternate fact. Basically, it's like how someone can be guilty of something, but you still have to say "alleged" before referencing the crime. Yes, you might have a million witnesses, but they aren't guilty until they are guilty. And I'd much rather have a government that abides by these rules than not. Offhanded remarks based on willful disregard to order should not be encouraged.
      - junofan 4y ago
        Come on. The NBER is not a government organization. This sophistry is just that.
    - actusual 4y ago
      What do you mean they aren't being ridiculed? Biden's approval rating is literally worse than Trump's was -> https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/?ex_cid=rrpromo https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/?...
  - newaccount2021 4y ago
    If it were Trump in office, that article would been disembowelled all over Twitter
    - roflyear 4y ago
      Well. His admin did have some astoundingly incompetent and insane people.
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    According to many of Biden's economic advisers, it is. For example: "Of course economists have a technical definition of recession, which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth." -- The head of Biden's National Economic Council, in a past life, apparently. You can find many other examples in the past of his advisors defining a recession as two quarters of negative GDP. And you can find many examples in the past of the press defining a recession as two quarters of negative growth. "two negative quarters in a row is a standard indicator for an economic recession." -- Washington Post, fact checking Donald Trump What has changed?
    - refurb 4y ago
      What has changed? The party in power.
  - joshuahedlund 4y ago
    honest question: has there ever been two quarters of negative GDP with this much job growth?
    - boredumb 4y ago
      Government forcing people out of their jobs and then allowing them to come back into the work force is not job growth in the sense of anything meaningful. So no it probably hasn't been seen before, but it's irrelevant, if I took your 10 dollars today and gave you back 8 dollars next week, your bank account isn't growing unless you only look at this weeks balance and choose to ignore the extremely recent past.
      - loeg 4y ago
        Employment is higher than it was before Covid and unemployment is down at around the same level. To put it in terms of your metaphor, the bank has given you back $10.10 or so for your $10.
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Except it isn't actually higher. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
        loeg 4y ago
        You can quibble with the exact threshold, but it certainly isn’t 80% of pre-Covid employment: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Certainly not 80%, but by all metrics, both mine and yours, it is still below what it was before.
- alldayeveryday 4y ago
  Funny how the news media has been inb4'ing the recession.
- ddorian43 4y ago
  It's probably lower. Just like the previous quarter GDP was revised lower.
- nimbius 4y ago
  seems so, although id argue the recession light came on in the cockpit sometime around late 2020...we just chose to ignore it. doubling down on 2010s speculative monetary policy of near negative interest is just wishful thinking, but directing relief grants to multibillion dollar industries was bad comedy. its really hard to imagine how the fed assumed 'free money' was a sober policy to drive one of the worlds largest economies on. the best we can hope for now is the student and automotive credit bubbles dont burst under the strain of half-percentage-point increases, which i suspect will continue throughout 2023 as inflation crests 15%.
  - qclibre22 4y ago
    Congress and the previous and current administrations are also responsible for the "free money", not just the Fed. Lot of blame to go around.
  - slaw 4y ago
    Is dollar going to stop being world reserve currency with 15% inflation?
    - dr_faustus 4y ago
      Not if the rest of the world is at 30%…
    - shagie 4y ago
      If we survived the economics of the 80s, we can survive the 2020s. Next, pick a country and its inflation rate. The Euro? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/business/eurozone-inflation-june.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/business/eurozone-inflati... Pick another currency that meets the requirements of being a reserve currency and then look at its inflation rate.
      - slaw 4y ago
        In the 80s inflation was high, but interest rate was above inflation. This time inflation is 8% above interest rate.
- melling 4y ago
  Not according to many commentators on CNBC. I don’t understand all the details. Personally, I think it would be great to understand the economy at a more basic level rather than what’s put out for the general public to consume in the often overly simplified terms. For example, the condition of the economy vs the Fed raising rates will be interesting. The Fed is trying to slow the economy but much of the inflation problem is supply side related.
  - roamerz 4y ago
    CNBC? That’s a great non-partisan source you cited there.
    - tiahura 4y ago
      They clearly have a mix of D R and I. Have you ever actually watched? If you want cable news that isn’t complete D good R bad, or the reverse, CNBC is the way to go.
    - melling 4y ago
      Yes, it is actually pretty good. In the morning, Joe tends to lean a bit right and Andrew leans a bit left. Ever watch Fox Business? They talk politics all day long. I try to deal with it during commercial breaks but it can’t seem to stick to business.
    - tapoxi 4y ago
      Are you confusing CNBC with MSNBC?
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- jasonlotito 4y ago
  No.
ggm 4y ago
The swing in the higher granularity data going to quarterly is .. impressive. Scary impressive. If its not a measurement artifact, its a real quirk of the situational pressures.
tiahura 4y ago
- czstar 4y ago
  Do you have evidence she was lying versus being wrong? A number of notable economists thought inflation was transitory. It’s hard to predict things like the effect the war in Ukraine would have and the effect the shipping industry doing its thing would have.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tiahura 4y ago
    The lying is the present attempt to tell us we’re not in a recession. And her failure to appreciate the scale of the price inflation problem was not just a case of being “wrong.” She was unable to see the worst inflation in 40 years when it was standing right in front of her. She’s a miserable failure.
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
      >her failure to appreciate the scale of the price inflation problem was not just a case of being “wrong.” If ever there were a case of 20:20 hindsight, that's one of them.
      - tiahura 4y ago
        Every day for a year, every single business leader in every single industry, has been on CNBC warning about inflation. The only ones who didn’t get it are in the present administration.
        NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
        Not so much. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/dealbook/inflation-questions-experts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/dealbook/inflati...
ConceitedCode 4y ago
In the USA, "officially" a group of 8 economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research decides when a recession starts. I suspect other countries have their own definitions. "The NBER's definition emphasizes that a recession involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months. In our interpretation of this definition, we treat the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—as somewhat interchangeable. That is, while each criterion needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, the committee concluded that the subsequent drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that, even if it proved to be quite brief, the downturn should be classified as a recession." [1] Planet Money (podcast on NPR) did an episode [2] a little while ago about it that I recommend listening to. They talk with one of the 8 economists. It was honestly refreshing hearing the economist talk about it, I got the impression that it was a more neutral take on the circumstances rather than pushing a narrative. [1] https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating [2] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107581150/recession-referees https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107581150/recession-referees
- Unklejoe 4y ago
  My problem with that is: > significant decline in economic activity What is "significant"? > more than a few months How long exactly? All I gather from their description is that they basically just get a "feel" for it. That's why so many people choose to follow the two negative quarter thing - it's objective and clearly defined, but maybe less accurate (particularly in cases like now where unemployment is still really low).
  - ConceitedCode 4y ago
    Both of those are up to the consensus of the group of economists. They regularly talk about it with each other and compare with historical data mostly. Keep in mind economics is a social science, not exact science. It would strike me more as "feeling it out", but they are not in a rush to announce it is or is not a recession until they have a better feel. Everyone seems to be rushing to call it a recession as early as possible. The economist I heard talking had a "wait and see" attitude on the podcast which was refreshing to hear.
yuan43 4y ago
> Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022 (table 1), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 percent. That makes two back-to-back quarters of real GDP contraction. To some, this is a recession, but it's the NBER that puts the stamp on it. AFAIK, NBER has never failed to put the recession stamp on back-to-back drops in GDP. It's worth noting that yield curve inversion predicted recession four months ago: > The 2-year and 10-year Treasury yields inverted for the first time since 2019 on Thursday, sending a possible warning signal that a recession could be on the horizon. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/31/2-year-treasury-yield-tops-10-year-rate-a-yield-curve-inversion-that-could-signal-a-recession.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/31/2-year-treasury-yield-tops-1... It's also worth noting that 2y-10y yields have been deeply inverted (~20 basis points) for most of July and are in that state today. Still one more thing to note: the earliest warning signal of them all appears to be an inversion of the eurodollar futures curve: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eurodollar-futures-market-betting-hawkish-fed-could-ease-rates-slightly-2024-2022-02-18/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eurodollar-futures-... It started inverting last year. The inversion steepened. It is now in a very deep inversion in the long end that is marching steadily to lower maturities.
- _marlowe_ 4y ago
  2-10 spread went through the pre-GFC record of -28 bps a day or two ago.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    GFC = Global Financial Crisis (2007-08)
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    I'm a little sanguine about the inverted yield curve as a real signal this time around, to be honest. We're in an environment of very rapidly rising short-term interest rates, specifically as the Fed attempts to try to manage inflation; with back-to-back 75 bps increases. That tends to have a curve flattening effect as the yield curve is nominal; short term yields rise more than longer tenors if the market believes that inflation will decrease as real yields will be higher.
ken47 4y ago
No group of people, Republican or Democrat, can stop the perpetual cycles of human history. At best, we can only delay the inevitable.
- wallawe 4y ago
  But we can stop lying about the definition of a recession. Biden admin changing the definition to avoid loss political points is about as nonsensical as blaming inflation squarely on Putin. The disinformation needs to stop.
  - rajin444 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - bandyaboot 4y ago
      It's similar to global warming/climate change. Moving from the former to the latter wasn't some nefarious plot to move the goalposts. The former is an imprecise term which hadn't mattered very much until that imprecision began to be weaponized by those with an agenda. Same thing with vaccines, the previous definition was inaccurate--but up until the covid vaccines, nobody pretended to be bothered by it. There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. Along came the anti covid vaccine folks to weaponize the inaccurate definition--so, in response, the definition is updated to be more accurate.
      - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
        > nobody pretended to be bothered by it How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? > There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. These are the reasons that I never opted to get the flu shot, and I never had my professional and social lives threatened as a result.
thepasswordis 4y ago
The way that the White House, and by extension the administrative branch of the government has decided to redefine "recession" and imply that the economy is doing really well right now is actually scary. These people do have huge levers that control our lives that they can pull. Their actions do have massive effects on the American economy, and by extension the economy of the rest of the world. The actions they're taking are legitimately horrifying. I seriously don't think these people understand what the lives of normal people are actually like. The white house had the gall to put out a tweet bragging that gas prices had come down, and that this could be saving people $35/mo, and how much that is helping. Gas if still $4.2 national average per gallon. That's HUGE, and the direct actions of the administration are to blame for this.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Direct actions like what? U.S. crude production is near all-time highs. Gas is expensive because ridiculous Americans will pay it and the oil companies figured that out. Shell just announced a $12 billion quarterly profit. The only thing I want to see out of Biden on gas prices is a windfall tax on oil companies where the funds are dedicated to lithium exploration.
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    Direct actions like immediately cancelling the keystone XL pipeline. Imagine you're a company which builds refining and extraction infrastructure. The government wants you to build more capacity to bring down the cost fuel, but 18 months ago. you watched them just straight up cancel a project which was already half finished. Would you go for this? I wouldn't. And you have a bunch of land lease contracts which allow you to extract oil. Without these contracts your business will collapse. The government has said that they won't give you any more until you use the ones you have. But again: they've spent the last 18 months cancelling projects, and talking about how we need to make a transition away from your business. Do you trust that once you use up the remaining leases you have, that they're really going to give you more? I wouldn't trust that.
    - 4y ago
swayvil 4y ago
- h2odragon 4y ago
  "Ownership" is morphing into paying rent. all property is becoming more like "intellectual property" with both time components and a public interest.
  - twh270 4y ago
    Ownership of products (especially software) is turning into a license that allows you to use the product as long as the manufacturer allows it (i.e., under certain conditions which of course are revocable or amendable at the corporation's whims). I'm pretty sure that if they could get away with it (today), some companies would love to sell you a license to breathe the air inside their buildings. On account, of course, of that air being expensive to suck into the building and clean and pipe throughout said edifice, and they need to 'recover' the costs associated with that.
    - 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
      it's called oxygen as a service (oaas) and if you've seen total recall you'll know bezos and musk are working towards it.
- txsoftwaredev 4y ago
  Female, according to Merriam-Webster: "having a gender identity that is the opposite of male" I would be incredibly offended if I was an actual woman.
  - ishjoh 4y ago
    I was surprised that one of the definitions of Female is exactly as quoted so I looked up male and one of the definitions is: > having a gender identity that is the opposite of female we have achieved word definition stack overflow!
partiallypro 4y ago
I personally think we're in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance. I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we're in recession while Fox, etc would say unemployment is still low which is what matters. How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? It's really pathetic. People will go to the ends of the earth just to protect politicians. Worse, even if we're in recession it's pretty mild, so I don't even know why there is so much handwringing about it.
- deleted 4y ago
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- mywittyname 4y ago
  I agree that we are in a recession. >How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? Because the actual data is sending mixed signals. People equate recessions with job losses, but job growth is still high and unemployment remains incredibly low. Businesses equate recessions with reduced demand for goods and and services, yet demand remains strong enough to push prices and profits to record levels. GDP has long been criticized for being a poor metric for the economy. But it's always been correlated enough with overall economic sentiment that it was Good Enough. It looks like we've finally gotten ourselves into a situation where the edge case issues with GDP surface. Lastly, not everyone feels recessions the same. I was one of those people who benefited from the financial crisis, because I kept my job and lived in an apartment, so my income was going up while my costs went down. That doesn't take away from the devastation it caused to other people.
  - njcgbc 4y ago
    > Businesses equate recessions with reduced demand for goods and and services, yet demand remains strong This isn't true, major retailers have been reporting falling demand. I'd cite the WSJ but for some reason I can't paste the link in this box, just Google "falling demand Wal-Mart" > enough to push prices and profits to record levels. Adjust both for inflation
throw8383833jj 4y ago
I don't like GDP as a measure of how well our economy is doing. We need a whole new measurement. A quality of life index, which measures the real cost of living, not in dollars, but in number of hours required to earn the necessities of life: shelter, food, water, and by extension, the things required to get those: transportation (to and from work, avg distance), certification (aka education), and medical insurance.
oofbey 4y ago
Wow the scale on the historic chart on that page is just nuts! Looking at Q2 & Q3 of 2020 - it just dwarfs everything and nearly makes the chart unreadable for the scale of numbers that we usually think of as important - where a full percent is real and two percent is big. I mean it makes sense given the pandemic, but seeing the economy shrink at a 30% annual rate one quarter and then bounce right back by the same amount the next quarter is insane. I wonder the last time it changed that quickly.
MaysonL 4y ago
The Sahm Rule real time recession indicator, which has been a pretty accurate indicator of recessions since the '60s, is saying that we've come out of the pandemic-induced recession, and not yet started a new one. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME
s1artibartfast 4y ago
I fundamentally don't understand the argument that we're not in a economic recession because employment is high. This is like saying sure you can't buy as much bread, but at least you are working longer. The fact that more people are working to produce less describes an economy in decline. What am I missing here?
ramoz 4y ago
Whenever I want to try and understand what may be happening in the economy, I rewatch[1] Ray Dalio’s 2013 video on how the economic machine works. Bits about a “recession” come up around the 12-18min mark with relevant info beyond. That said, I don’t know enough to map/equate these simple types of economic explanation with current actual state. [1] https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0 https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0
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176 points by mrep 4y ago

ramesh31 4y ago

So it’s official now

iamricks 4y ago
According to the White House, it is not [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/07/21/how-do-economists-determine-whether-the-economy-is-in-a-recession/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/07/21/...
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  Kind of amazing how this administration isn’t getting the kind of ridicule that would be expected if the previous administration tried to deny a recession was happening according to the objective definition by including a subjective qualifier. Is this not the same thing as ‘alternate facts’?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    What conclusion are you trying to draw from this subjective view?
    - pgrote 4y ago
      That the definition of a recession has always been 2 quarters of negative GDP. The administration now believes there is nuance in the numbers, so what was the accepted definition in the past is no longer. The fact the media on whole has decided it's ok to redefine a commonly accepted definition when the administration promotes it lends itself to the media being a mouthpiece for the administration. I am willing to understand nuance and a changing definition, as I am sure there are parts of the economy people are learning to deal with. Gig workers, workers headed back from retirement and more. This doesn't even touch on the self fulfilling prophecy of hearing that the country is in a recession. I am less willing to accept a change in a short timeframe and right before numbers are released.
      - chrisco255 4y ago
        > This doesn't even touch on the self fulfilling prophecy of hearing that the country is in a recession. That's not how recessions work. There is always people predicting a recession and always people predicting a turnaround or growth. It's quite simple, however, to engineer a recession when you raise interest rates for such a heavily indebted economy.
        pgrote 4y ago
        >That's not how recessions work. I am unsure the point you are making. My point was related to mindset and I should have clarified. If a group of people, normal non economic expert citizens, believe a recession is here they change their behavior. The media plays a part in amplifying it. At that point it doesn't matter what is happening at a macro economic level. I am for introducing nuance to the judgement of a recession or not. I am not for doing it right before numbers are released the admin saying, "Well, there is nuance in the determination" before the numbers are released. At best all you are doing is introducing confusion to the non economic expert citizens and at worst you are attempting to gaslight people. I hope that helps explain my thoughts.
      - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
        >That the definition of a recession has always been 2 quarters of negative GDP. Well, if you want to be specific, the NBER (which calls the game on what is a recession or not) defines it as "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months." The "two quarters of declining real GDP" (GDP increased by 7.8% in nominal terms) is the pop-economics yardstick. Are you aware we had a recession in 2001? And yet that managed to happen without having two consecutive quarters of negative GDP.
      - deleted 4y ago
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      - kevstev 4y ago
        I mean I hear you on "changing the definition" from the commonly accepted two quarters of declining GDP numbers- though that was never actually official, you are mistaken about that- the NBER is the "official" source and they declare it based on a range of factors that there is some subjectiveness to- its not a direct formula. However, wouldn't you agree there is nuance here? In Q4, GDP rose 6.9%, a number so big that we haven't seen that in decades- it appears around the early 1980s was the last time we saw those kinds of numbers. There has been a lot of whipsaw effects as we get out of covid- supply chains are all over the place, companies placing orders to get goods in to avoid snarls, only to now find that demand for goods, which boomed during the pandemic, has now eased as people have reverted to spending on going out and traveling, etc... There seems to be a lot of mismatch in supply and demand again. The unemployment rate is at 3.6%- an astonishingly low number- these lows were last seen in the 1960s and 1970s. On the flipside, inflation is high, gas prices are high and that hurts a lot of people- I live in a city, so this is mostly irrelevant and driven by forces out of anyone in the US govt's control. There is evidence of some rockier times ahead, but when I think "recession" I think of a lot more pain than what we are currently experiencing.
    - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
      The news media is not nearly as objective as they claim to be. And, they exercise a considerable amount of discretion when it comes to either amplifying a potential controversy or downplaying it.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
      >”You beclown yourself by believing there is or has ever been an objective definition. There is not and has never been.” Okay, consider myself beclowned then. So how did economists define all of the previous recessions on record? I know that ‘a recession’ is not a scientific measurement, it is a conventional definition. But don’t you find it odd that the administration wants to jettison the conventional definition when it applies to the economy under their leadership? Right before the midterms, no less?
    - collegeburner 4y ago
      a lot of economists use 2 consecutive quarters negative bc 1. the business cycle committee is slow af 2. they only cover the U.S. so we gotta have something a bit consistent across countries
    - bumby 4y ago
      Their procedure is subjective, but there is still a standardized measure of convenience, no? Just like there is an "official kilogram". We can say, "That's an objective measurement of weight on Earth" but it's not. It's the measurement of the standard kilogram in France. And that "objective" measure can change [1]. It doesn't mean there isn't a consensus on what a kilogram is. Yellen was on Meet the Press last week explaining there is a difference between the "official" measure of a recession and the "two quarters of negative growth" heuristic. That's not to say that politicians can't, or won't, play wordsmith games. [1]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070921110735.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070921110735.h...
      - jeffbee 4y ago
        The kilogram is a quite poor analogy. The GDP is not an objective indicator of recession for the exact reasons you see around you right now. Contraction of economic activity caused by supply bottlenecks doesn’t fit the pattern of recession. The labor situation is still white hot, prices are going up etc.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    Soon people will start disappearing from photos, back to the future style.
    - mokanfar 4y ago
      Or Stalin Style.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    It’s because the media leans democrat. But make no mistake Fox News, BBC, and other moderate or right leaning news sources will call this a recession. The news has for the most part has not called out Biden’s many missteps. Not even John Oliver is making fun of it.
    - throwawaycuriou 4y ago
      Oliver's most recent ditty did roast Biden remarking 'I can taste it. I think he could've done more to roast previous administration policies.
    - Der_Einzige 4y ago
      Oh man if you think the BBC is even "moderate" than I have a bridge to sell you.
      - systemvoltage 4y ago
        Yes, BBC isn't moderate just like NPR isn't moderate anymore. May be in the 20th century, BBC and NPR were neutral. But, that's clearly and indisputedly not true anymore. They're all left leaning.
  - collegeburner 4y ago
    i don't much like the former guy but there's def a slant. i'm pretty sure joe is this close sharpieing in "no" in front of "recession" on his slides. up until literally 2 weeks ago the media was on about the "biden boom" (lmao)
  - refurb 4y ago
    That’s because it’s not politically convenient to hold to that definition. When the other party is in the Whitehouse it will be though. “It’s not about what’s true, it’s what you can get people to believe.”
  - boredumb 4y ago
    It's fairly obvious there are political bias in american media and always has been. If your party is hostile to increasing federal government or regulatory capture you will be under a microscope and even sacrifice some credibility to attack you, otherwise you can bumble around, redefine common terms, deflect and mislead and have the entirety of relevant and 'trusted' media sources run cover for you indefinitely.
    - weberer 4y ago
      >and always has been Even just 15 years ago it was nowhere this overt or coordinated. The turning point seems to be shortly after JournoList and CabalList started when different independent media organizations began to collude to push a unified "narrative" rather than the truth.
    - Workaccount2 4y ago
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - hedora 4y ago
        In fairness, the "free from government" party has direct ties to foreign powers that are openly trying to drive us to a civil war. Taking away bodily autonomy is just a minor skirmish; and the means justify the ends, after all. Wait till next year when the sodomy and birth control laws start to pass, along with the plans to erect border checkpoints within the US to prevent people from entering and leaving certain states. Those are enabled by existing supreme court rulings. They've already taken up a case for next year that will allow state legislatures (that are already controlled via gerrymandering, and often elected by a minority) to just ignore vote tallies and appoint whoever they want. I'm curious to see who the military sides with during the inevitable 2024 coup. Last time, they made it clear they would remove Trump by force if needed. Presumably they're not becoming more loyal to him, given that he's out of office, but it will be dicey when they have to choose between ending democracy in the US or overriding the supreme court and also the house or senate.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    > Kind of anazing... Get used to it. We're back to the status quo (of incompetent media). In fact, it was the same for the previous admin, just in a different way. The System doesn't like outsiders. If you haven't paid your dues, sucked up, kissed the ring, etc. then you're marginalized. Put another way, how would it look if someone with no experience was decently effective? Say about as effective as the current highly experienced (politician) that's POTUS? I'm no fan of Don T, but given humam nature and The System, he was doomed to "fail" no matter what. As in, perception is reality (and most people now have a bias that isn't going to change).
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      It's worth adding - especially for the down voters - that prior to leaving The Daily Show, Jon Stewart was the most trusted source for news for a fair percentage of the population. The channel for TDS was on...Comedy Central. Believing in the mainstream media is the adult equivalent of believing in Santa Claus.
  - jddddd 4y ago
    - jddddd 4y ago
      - pgrote 4y ago
        >don't understand what NBER is. There is a consideration that NBER isn't the issue. yes you are correct, they make a determination. I think the difference this time is that you have what was commonly accepted among normal people that 2 quarters negative meant recession. This time there is pushback against it. I think the hang up is more political than technical. When the opposing party controls the white house there wouldn't be broad support for "let's wait and let NBER make a determination." Hope that helps somewhat.
  - everdrive 4y ago
    I believe they are getting quite a bit of ridicule for it.
    - shusaku 4y ago
      The announcement was like an hour ago and we’re already trying to measure the amount of ridicule?
  - MattGaiser 4y ago
    But it is not the objective definition: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jul/27/instagram-posts/no-white-house-didnt-change-definition-recession/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jul/27/instagram-...
  - jasonlotito 4y ago
    No. They are basing it off facts. The NBER is the one who defines a recessions. They haven't done so (that I'm aware of) as of right now. It might be that it will eventually be the case, but the arbitrator of this hasn't ruled on it. Calling it a recession officially now would be the alternate fact. Basically, it's like how someone can be guilty of something, but you still have to say "alleged" before referencing the crime. Yes, you might have a million witnesses, but they aren't guilty until they are guilty. And I'd much rather have a government that abides by these rules than not. Offhanded remarks based on willful disregard to order should not be encouraged.
    - junofan 4y ago
      Come on. The NBER is not a government organization. This sophistry is just that.
  - actusual 4y ago
    What do you mean they aren't being ridiculed? Biden's approval rating is literally worse than Trump's was -> https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/?ex_cid=rrpromo https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/?...
- newaccount2021 4y ago
  If it were Trump in office, that article would been disembowelled all over Twitter
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Well. His admin did have some astoundingly incompetent and insane people.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  According to many of Biden's economic advisers, it is. For example: "Of course economists have a technical definition of recession, which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth." -- The head of Biden's National Economic Council, in a past life, apparently. You can find many other examples in the past of his advisors defining a recession as two quarters of negative GDP. And you can find many examples in the past of the press defining a recession as two quarters of negative growth. "two negative quarters in a row is a standard indicator for an economic recession." -- Washington Post, fact checking Donald Trump What has changed?
  - refurb 4y ago
    What has changed? The party in power.
- joshuahedlund 4y ago
  honest question: has there ever been two quarters of negative GDP with this much job growth?
  - boredumb 4y ago
    Government forcing people out of their jobs and then allowing them to come back into the work force is not job growth in the sense of anything meaningful. So no it probably hasn't been seen before, but it's irrelevant, if I took your 10 dollars today and gave you back 8 dollars next week, your bank account isn't growing unless you only look at this weeks balance and choose to ignore the extremely recent past.
    - loeg 4y ago
      Employment is higher than it was before Covid and unemployment is down at around the same level. To put it in terms of your metaphor, the bank has given you back $10.10 or so for your $10.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Except it isn't actually higher. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
        loeg 4y ago
        You can quibble with the exact threshold, but it certainly isn’t 80% of pre-Covid employment: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Certainly not 80%, but by all metrics, both mine and yours, it is still below what it was before.
alldayeveryday 4y ago
Funny how the news media has been inb4'ing the recession.
ddorian43 4y ago
It's probably lower. Just like the previous quarter GDP was revised lower.
nimbius 4y ago
seems so, although id argue the recession light came on in the cockpit sometime around late 2020...we just chose to ignore it. doubling down on 2010s speculative monetary policy of near negative interest is just wishful thinking, but directing relief grants to multibillion dollar industries was bad comedy. its really hard to imagine how the fed assumed 'free money' was a sober policy to drive one of the worlds largest economies on. the best we can hope for now is the student and automotive credit bubbles dont burst under the strain of half-percentage-point increases, which i suspect will continue throughout 2023 as inflation crests 15%.
- qclibre22 4y ago
  Congress and the previous and current administrations are also responsible for the "free money", not just the Fed. Lot of blame to go around.
- slaw 4y ago
  Is dollar going to stop being world reserve currency with 15% inflation?
  - dr_faustus 4y ago
    Not if the rest of the world is at 30%…
  - shagie 4y ago
    If we survived the economics of the 80s, we can survive the 2020s. Next, pick a country and its inflation rate. The Euro? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/business/eurozone-inflation-june.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/business/eurozone-inflati... Pick another currency that meets the requirements of being a reserve currency and then look at its inflation rate.
    - slaw 4y ago
      In the 80s inflation was high, but interest rate was above inflation. This time inflation is 8% above interest rate.
melling 4y ago
Not according to many commentators on CNBC. I don’t understand all the details. Personally, I think it would be great to understand the economy at a more basic level rather than what’s put out for the general public to consume in the often overly simplified terms. For example, the condition of the economy vs the Fed raising rates will be interesting. The Fed is trying to slow the economy but much of the inflation problem is supply side related.
- roamerz 4y ago
  CNBC? That’s a great non-partisan source you cited there.
  - tiahura 4y ago
    They clearly have a mix of D R and I. Have you ever actually watched? If you want cable news that isn’t complete D good R bad, or the reverse, CNBC is the way to go.
  - melling 4y ago
    Yes, it is actually pretty good. In the morning, Joe tends to lean a bit right and Andrew leans a bit left. Ever watch Fox Business? They talk politics all day long. I try to deal with it during commercial breaks but it can’t seem to stick to business.
  - tapoxi 4y ago
    Are you confusing CNBC with MSNBC?
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jasonlotito 4y ago
No.

ggm 4y ago

The swing in the higher granularity data going to quarterly is .. impressive. Scary impressive. If its not a measurement artifact, its a real quirk of the situational pressures.

tiahura 4y ago

czstar 4y ago
Do you have evidence she was lying versus being wrong? A number of notable economists thought inflation was transitory. It’s hard to predict things like the effect the war in Ukraine would have and the effect the shipping industry doing its thing would have.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tiahura 4y ago
  The lying is the present attempt to tell us we’re not in a recession. And her failure to appreciate the scale of the price inflation problem was not just a case of being “wrong.” She was unable to see the worst inflation in 40 years when it was standing right in front of her. She’s a miserable failure.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    >her failure to appreciate the scale of the price inflation problem was not just a case of being “wrong.” If ever there were a case of 20:20 hindsight, that's one of them.
    - tiahura 4y ago
      Every day for a year, every single business leader in every single industry, has been on CNBC warning about inflation. The only ones who didn’t get it are in the present administration.
      - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
        Not so much. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/dealbook/inflation-questions-experts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/dealbook/inflati...

ConceitedCode 4y ago

In the USA, "officially" a group of 8 economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research decides when a recession starts. I suspect other countries have their own definitions. "The NBER's definition emphasizes that a recession involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months. In our interpretation of this definition, we treat the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—as somewhat interchangeable. That is, while each criterion needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, the committee concluded that the subsequent drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that, even if it proved to be quite brief, the downturn should be classified as a recession." [1] Planet Money (podcast on NPR) did an episode [2] a little while ago about it that I recommend listening to. They talk with one of the 8 economists. It was honestly refreshing hearing the economist talk about it, I got the impression that it was a more neutral take on the circumstances rather than pushing a narrative. [1] https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating [2] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107581150/recession-referees https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107581150/recession-referees

Unklejoe 4y ago
My problem with that is: > significant decline in economic activity What is "significant"? > more than a few months How long exactly? All I gather from their description is that they basically just get a "feel" for it. That's why so many people choose to follow the two negative quarter thing - it's objective and clearly defined, but maybe less accurate (particularly in cases like now where unemployment is still really low).
- ConceitedCode 4y ago
  Both of those are up to the consensus of the group of economists. They regularly talk about it with each other and compare with historical data mostly. Keep in mind economics is a social science, not exact science. It would strike me more as "feeling it out", but they are not in a rush to announce it is or is not a recession until they have a better feel. Everyone seems to be rushing to call it a recession as early as possible. The economist I heard talking had a "wait and see" attitude on the podcast which was refreshing to hear.

yuan43 4y ago

> Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022 (table 1), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 percent. That makes two back-to-back quarters of real GDP contraction. To some, this is a recession, but it's the NBER that puts the stamp on it. AFAIK, NBER has never failed to put the recession stamp on back-to-back drops in GDP. It's worth noting that yield curve inversion predicted recession four months ago: > The 2-year and 10-year Treasury yields inverted for the first time since 2019 on Thursday, sending a possible warning signal that a recession could be on the horizon. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/31/2-year-treasury-yield-tops-10-year-rate-a-yield-curve-inversion-that-could-signal-a-recession.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/31/2-year-treasury-yield-tops-1... It's also worth noting that 2y-10y yields have been deeply inverted (~20 basis points) for most of July and are in that state today. Still one more thing to note: the earliest warning signal of them all appears to be an inversion of the eurodollar futures curve: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eurodollar-futures-market-betting-hawkish-fed-could-ease-rates-slightly-2024-2022-02-18/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eurodollar-futures-... It started inverting last year. The inversion steepened. It is now in a very deep inversion in the long end that is marching steadily to lower maturities.

_marlowe_ 4y ago
2-10 spread went through the pre-GFC record of -28 bps a day or two ago.
- djbusby 4y ago
  GFC = Global Financial Crisis (2007-08)
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  I'm a little sanguine about the inverted yield curve as a real signal this time around, to be honest. We're in an environment of very rapidly rising short-term interest rates, specifically as the Fed attempts to try to manage inflation; with back-to-back 75 bps increases. That tends to have a curve flattening effect as the yield curve is nominal; short term yields rise more than longer tenors if the market believes that inflation will decrease as real yields will be higher.

ken47 4y ago

No group of people, Republican or Democrat, can stop the perpetual cycles of human history. At best, we can only delay the inevitable.

wallawe 4y ago
But we can stop lying about the definition of a recession. Biden admin changing the definition to avoid loss political points is about as nonsensical as blaming inflation squarely on Putin. The disinformation needs to stop.
- rajin444 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    It's similar to global warming/climate change. Moving from the former to the latter wasn't some nefarious plot to move the goalposts. The former is an imprecise term which hadn't mattered very much until that imprecision began to be weaponized by those with an agenda. Same thing with vaccines, the previous definition was inaccurate--but up until the covid vaccines, nobody pretended to be bothered by it. There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. Along came the anti covid vaccine folks to weaponize the inaccurate definition--so, in response, the definition is updated to be more accurate.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      > nobody pretended to be bothered by it How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? > There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. These are the reasons that I never opted to get the flu shot, and I never had my professional and social lives threatened as a result.

thepasswordis 4y ago

The way that the White House, and by extension the administrative branch of the government has decided to redefine "recession" and imply that the economy is doing really well right now is actually scary. These people do have huge levers that control our lives that they can pull. Their actions do have massive effects on the American economy, and by extension the economy of the rest of the world. The actions they're taking are legitimately horrifying. I seriously don't think these people understand what the lives of normal people are actually like. The white house had the gall to put out a tweet bragging that gas prices had come down, and that this could be saving people $35/mo, and how much that is helping. Gas if still $4.2 national average per gallon. That's HUGE, and the direct actions of the administration are to blame for this.

jeffbee 4y ago
Direct actions like what? U.S. crude production is near all-time highs. Gas is expensive because ridiculous Americans will pay it and the oil companies figured that out. Shell just announced a $12 billion quarterly profit. The only thing I want to see out of Biden on gas prices is a windfall tax on oil companies where the funds are dedicated to lithium exploration.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  Direct actions like immediately cancelling the keystone XL pipeline. Imagine you're a company which builds refining and extraction infrastructure. The government wants you to build more capacity to bring down the cost fuel, but 18 months ago. you watched them just straight up cancel a project which was already half finished. Would you go for this? I wouldn't. And you have a bunch of land lease contracts which allow you to extract oil. Without these contracts your business will collapse. The government has said that they won't give you any more until you use the ones you have. But again: they've spent the last 18 months cancelling projects, and talking about how we need to make a transition away from your business. Do you trust that once you use up the remaining leases you have, that they're really going to give you more? I wouldn't trust that.
  - 4y ago

swayvil 4y ago

h2odragon 4y ago
"Ownership" is morphing into paying rent. all property is becoming more like "intellectual property" with both time components and a public interest.
- twh270 4y ago
  Ownership of products (especially software) is turning into a license that allows you to use the product as long as the manufacturer allows it (i.e., under certain conditions which of course are revocable or amendable at the corporation's whims). I'm pretty sure that if they could get away with it (today), some companies would love to sell you a license to breathe the air inside their buildings. On account, of course, of that air being expensive to suck into the building and clean and pipe throughout said edifice, and they need to 'recover' the costs associated with that.
  - 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
    it's called oxygen as a service (oaas) and if you've seen total recall you'll know bezos and musk are working towards it.
txsoftwaredev 4y ago
Female, according to Merriam-Webster: "having a gender identity that is the opposite of male" I would be incredibly offended if I was an actual woman.
- ishjoh 4y ago
  I was surprised that one of the definitions of Female is exactly as quoted so I looked up male and one of the definitions is: > having a gender identity that is the opposite of female we have achieved word definition stack overflow!

partiallypro 4y ago

I personally think we're in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance. I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we're in recession while Fox, etc would say unemployment is still low which is what matters. How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? It's really pathetic. People will go to the ends of the earth just to protect politicians. Worse, even if we're in recession it's pretty mild, so I don't even know why there is so much handwringing about it.

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mywittyname 4y ago
I agree that we are in a recession. >How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? Because the actual data is sending mixed signals. People equate recessions with job losses, but job growth is still high and unemployment remains incredibly low. Businesses equate recessions with reduced demand for goods and and services, yet demand remains strong enough to push prices and profits to record levels. GDP has long been criticized for being a poor metric for the economy. But it's always been correlated enough with overall economic sentiment that it was Good Enough. It looks like we've finally gotten ourselves into a situation where the edge case issues with GDP surface. Lastly, not everyone feels recessions the same. I was one of those people who benefited from the financial crisis, because I kept my job and lived in an apartment, so my income was going up while my costs went down. That doesn't take away from the devastation it caused to other people.
- njcgbc 4y ago
  > Businesses equate recessions with reduced demand for goods and and services, yet demand remains strong This isn't true, major retailers have been reporting falling demand. I'd cite the WSJ but for some reason I can't paste the link in this box, just Google "falling demand Wal-Mart" > enough to push prices and profits to record levels. Adjust both for inflation

throw8383833jj 4y ago

I don't like GDP as a measure of how well our economy is doing. We need a whole new measurement. A quality of life index, which measures the real cost of living, not in dollars, but in number of hours required to earn the necessities of life: shelter, food, water, and by extension, the things required to get those: transportation (to and from work, avg distance), certification (aka education), and medical insurance.

oofbey 4y ago

Wow the scale on the historic chart on that page is just nuts! Looking at Q2 & Q3 of 2020 - it just dwarfs everything and nearly makes the chart unreadable for the scale of numbers that we usually think of as important - where a full percent is real and two percent is big. I mean it makes sense given the pandemic, but seeing the economy shrink at a 30% annual rate one quarter and then bounce right back by the same amount the next quarter is insane. I wonder the last time it changed that quickly.

MaysonL 4y ago

The Sahm Rule real time recession indicator, which has been a pretty accurate indicator of recessions since the '60s, is saying that we've come out of the pandemic-induced recession, and not yet started a new one. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME

s1artibartfast 4y ago

I fundamentally don't understand the argument that we're not in a economic recession because employment is high. This is like saying sure you can't buy as much bread, but at least you are working longer. The fact that more people are working to produce less describes an economy in decline. What am I missing here?

ramoz 4y ago

Whenever I want to try and understand what may be happening in the economy, I rewatch[1] Ray Dalio’s 2013 video on how the economic machine works. Bits about a “recession” come up around the 12-18min mark with relevant info beyond. That said, I don’t know enough to map/equate these simple types of economic explanation with current actual state. [1] https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0 https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0

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