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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Fragile by what measure? The US economy at least appears to be weathering the storm, and many experts expect it to start rallying in the next few months.

I mean...we just faced a complete black swan event where people all had to lock themselves in their homes, and so far we seem to have avoided catastrophe (at least by many expert predictions).

The US is extremely well positioned to avoid many of the negative effects that most countries are going to be seeing.

We are the opposite of fragile, at least compared to other human economies.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-0...

https://youtu.be/7IWdNPAOQDE

https://zoom.us/rec/play/uZV8drj9-z83SIDH5QSDAvcoW9XoKK2shHI...

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I think it's quite early to say if it weathered the storm, there might be long-term consequences. Also not sure what to say about the experts calling a rally, specially when those 'experts' are politicians.

Which one of the experts I linked here is a politician?

The US State Dept?

One of these are hosted by the US state department, but the person talking is from JP Morgan, which they cover in the introduction. The person moderating is from the state department, but she isn't presenting anything, just moderating questions to the guest speaker, who is not a politician.

The others are Peter Zeihan, and an essay in Foreign Affairs. These are not politicians.

It doesn't help your point since the US State Dept would likely not host content that's in contradiction with the administration. I'm not saying it's staged of course, but there are chances a convenient opinion was presented.

Also, JP Morgan doesn't really count for expert. That's not because they don't know what they are doing but because their incentives are not aligned, they have a stock to defend.

>> Fragile by what measure? The US economy at least appears to be weathering the storm, and many experts expect it to start rallying in the next few months.

There won't be a "V-shaped" recovery. That's just what the administration is hoping for because they understand it will have a massive impact in November.

The best analogy I've heard is that we just had a huge earthquake, and now everyone is waiting for the tsunami of a catastrophic economic crash.

Please see any of the things I linked. None of these people are from the administration.

They're either paywalled or videos. Got any generally-accessible text sources?

Hmm, I guess usually this sort of stuff is paywalled. Yeah I can see why that's a bad thing. I'll look.

> Fragile by what measure? The US economy at least appears to be weathering the storm

I'll turn it back around to you: by what measure? Spiking nearly 40m jobless claims isn't weathering the storm. Spiking nearly 40m jobless claims, while continuing to see 2m+ every report, seems to be the opposite of weathering the storm.

I'd just ask you to read or listen to any of the things I linked here. They're all relatively long, and I'm not going to do a better job of summarizing them than the authors/presenters.

I mean, the gist is: The American economy is incredibly resilient, and it is showing during this. Yes it's true that jobless claims are increasing, but the expectation is that they will peak next week. While we won't be an overall growth year, the expectation is to close out the year at levels comparable to those in 2010.

In addition to that, the US is just incredibly resilient when compared to the rest of the world. The world still trades using our dollars, they still want to buy our bonds, they still want to invest in our companies. All of this stuff ends up benefiting the US job seeker, and the American family because it means that there are jobs, stability, and the ability to pass monetary policy that protects them in times of crisis.

If you want specific details, there is hours of content that I linked that will explain explicitly why. \\

> they still want to invest in our companies.

Who wouldn't when they can't fail?

> All of this stuff ends up benefiting the US job seeker, and the American family

Since the last downturn, roughly half of the jobs created have been approximately gig-economy. An expansion of the precariat isn't helping me, it's not helping my parents, and it's not helping a lot of other Americans. It's actively immiserating people. But, hey, the number went up, so we must be resilient.

> because it means that there are jobs

Unless you're part of the 12% and growing portion of the country that are out of work today, and the 42% of jobs that won't return after.

> stability

Unless you're part of the gig economy workforce or you live in a right-to-work state. So, you know, everyone.

> and the ability to pass monetary policy that protects them in times of crisis.

Nothing protects me like a small business loan that I wouldn't ever qualify for and virtual money printers running full speed.

This is such a deeply ideological take, so i guess it seems in-line with linking to foreignpolicy, but the gist of it is: the American economy is resilient because it has been resilient in the past and we can make this claim by removing the current historical context of the moment.

>Who wouldn't when they can't fail?

Yes, exactly.

>Since the last downturn, roughly half of the jobs created have been approximately gig-economy.

Can you source this?

>This is such a deeply ideological take, so i guess it seems in-line with linking to foreignpolicy

What's wrong with foreign policy?

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