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Comment by yuan43 | Hacker News Reader

> 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-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-...

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.

View on HN

1947 saw two Qs neg growth amd no recession.

This is something that everyone who is actually interested in the topic will have heard of because it's been mentioned repeatedly by the experts. And yet this thread is filled with confident statements by people who clearly have put zero effort into forming their opinion. Sad.

1947 was 75 years ago. Taking 1 example per lifetime doesn’t constitute any sort of evidence to the contrary.

The OP comment said: "AFAIK, NBER has never failed to put the recession stamp on back-to-back drops in GDP."

The comment you replied to gave evidence that directly contradicts the OP comment.

On the other hand, we just went through a once per lifetime pandemic and a once per lifetime consumer stimulus package. Supply chains are wrecked and we're in a period during which international trading patterns could massively change. Meanwhile,

* China is still purusing zero COVID.

* There's a land war in Europe with Russia effectively cut off from the Western world.

* German manufacturing, once a workhorse, is being crushed by energy costs

* much of the developing world is swimming hard against the current just to stay alive.

I don't think we are in a situation analogous to 1947, of course, and I do think we are in or at least heading into a more-than-technical recession. But "irrelevant because that only happens after once in a lifetime extremely disruptive events" is a pretty... odd... take in 2022.

> German manufacturing, once a workhorse, is being crushed by energy costs

Hmm, maybe Germany can solve this the same way they "solved" ballooning Berliner rents: just pass a law saying how much energy should cost. Simple. They do love regulations over there.

Or just ask Gerhard Schröder and the rest of their former chancellors who were in bed with Russia, to blow their hot air through the pipes this winter. They have enough of it.

Lmao yeah just cap the prices that won't cause a shortage

> On the other hand, we just went through a once per lifetime pandemic and a once per lifetime consumer stimulus package

And—relatedly—a once-in-ever declaration of a recession of less than one quarter, because of how uniquely sharp the decline in output, employment, and all the recession-relevant measures was, even though it quickly reversed direction due to stimulus and other policy responses.

So it's kind of weird people today pretending that the 2-consecutive-doen-quarter thing has always been an ironclad definition of a recession.

>yet this thread is filled with confident statements by people who clearly have put zero effort into forming their opinion.

It's funny when you read so many people on HN talk about others speaking outside of their areas of expertise when someone is talking about tech and then come to articles like this where a bunch of programmers try to sound like experts on the economy. Hubris is not in short supply.

Good point, thanks for the clarification. Worth noting that the role of arbiter of recessions for NBER only came into being in the 1960s, long after that incident. And 1947 marked the first year the US produced a quarterly GDP report.

This Twitter thread has details:

https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1552411779040419841

The comparison between an economy transitioning from war footing and one transitioning from pandemic footing might be relevant.

> Worth noting that the role of arbiter of recessions for NBER only came into being in the 1960s, long after that incident.

So? The NBER business cycle dating work covers back into the 19th century, even if some of it was done retrospectively. If anything, the fact that it applied it's methodology this way to times when there could not possibly have been any policy impact to its decisions just further undermines the idea that exceptions to the 2-consecutive-down-quarter rule are about current political convenience.

> And 1947 marked the first year the US produced a quarterly GDP report.

NBER was doing income and product reports before the government did, the government actually directly was motivated by NBER’s prior work in starting to do them.

2-10 spread went through the pre-GFC record of -28 bps a day or two ago.

GFC = Global Financial Crisis (2007-08)

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.

Doesn’t a Fed typically lower rates during a recession?

At least at some point, in order to bring a country out of the recession.

Though not unprecedented, they're typically not fighting inflation and a recession at the same time.

In this case, the Fed is stimulating a (hopefully mild) recession, by raising interest rates, in order to bring inflation down.

Until rates are above inflation (now around 8%) I would say the Fed is still pumping up the economy, but it's hard to see the Fed push up rates to that level like Volker did the last time the US had high inflation. The Fed set the federal funds rate at 20% in June of 1981 when inflation was about 15%. If the US has to finance much of its debt at 15% something will seriously break.

In 1974, President Ford had Whip Inflation Now buttons printed up, and 1981 was seven years later. So Volcker's dramatic raise was in that context. Whereas people are more used to a more moribund economy since 2008 with very low interest rates, inflation, and lots of QE, with the subprime bailout followed by the Covid stimulus. Actual non-negligible inflation and an actual interest rate is something people have started seeing more recently.

From what I recall there was a fairly long period pre Volker where there were very half hearted attempts to get inflation under control without going for the kill so to speak.

I think the Fed knowing that history will try to kill it dead first time, because if they don't they know they'll likely have to go even higher with interest rates at the second attempt and the higher they're forced to go the more danger there will be to US financing operations as you say.

There have been predictions that the Fed would exhaust its capability to regulate the economy through monetary stimulus for years with the end result being inflation and recession. Anecdotally, over the course of my life the size of fiscal and monetary stimulus has only increased. During the 90s we would stimulate with a few points of interest reduction, then in the 2000s we had 08 leading into permanent QE through the 10's. The 2020's have seen stimulus activities far in excess of '08.

The Fed lowers rates when lowering rates could plausibly help. The Fed has a dual mandate to control inflation and maximize employment. Employment remains incredibly strong while inflation is obviously too high which is the clearest possible signal to tighten. The Fed won't/can't react to changes in the stock market, supply chain or foreign policy. It's not just "loosen during recession, tighten during expansion".

Also, as the Biden administration is quick to point out, US industrial output is up.

So, people are accepting fewer, apparently better employment offers, manufacturing is being onshored, but (due to lower supply of foreign slave labor and exploitable US workers) profits are down, and inflation is up.

Since unemplyoment is low, the Fed mandate seems pretty clear at this point. Interest rates should go up. The market will tank for a few years because inflation and paying workers screws with profits, then bounce back (in real terms) once corporate debt, etc unwinds, and productivity starts to rise again.

Rigid and weak corporations will be displaced by startups and existing companies that are able to adapt/innovate.

It's weird to me that Fox News's staunchly anti-China, pro-US manufacturing Fox News's viewership is so bent out of shape.

Aren't we experiencing exactly the effect Trump's tariffs were supposed to achieve?

Not to delve into politics, but I defy to you explain what the Trump administration actually intended the output of the tariffs on China to be. Trump very consistently said the tariffs were retaliatory for China "taking our money" with the trade deficit being his evidence. He sent separate negotiating teams in the form of Steven Mnuchin and Peter Navarro who were pushing two separate agendas neither of which aligned with Trump's nonsensical reasoning. As far as I can tell, the tariffs were pure PR as Trump did not care about or even understand the intricacy of that or any other policies he advocated. And FOX, of course, isn't really conservative news, it's Republican news.

In reality, there is a case for tariffs on China that has nothing to do with trade deficits. Biden can't just end them because it will make him look soft and let them off the hook for IP theft and other abuses. Really the president should not have this authority at all, Congress should be doing it.

The Fed has no mandate to generate or maintain economic growth.

The two areas in which it does have a mandate are price stability and sustainable employment. Usually, recessions are accompanied by a loss of jobs, so that's where the Fed would intervene; that isn't happening thus far which is another reason why economists are split over what is really going on in the economy.

Employment has fallen slightly recently: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CE16OV

Not dramatically though, a more charitable view would say that employement levels are fairly flat.

The unemployment rate is also extremely low by historical standards, even when taking into account the various measures of unemployment. There is also plenty of evidence that businesses are finding it unusually difficult to hire employees. The Fed is probably fine with the unemployment rate rising pretty significantly because they probably don't see the current rate as being sustainable.

> The Fed has no mandate to generate or maintain economic growth.

Correct. And yet they let inflation get this bad, so it seems like they're trying to avoid recessions even though they haven't been told to.

Or they believed it would be transitory and any action would upset longer term price and employment stability.

You don't need to guess; you can go read the minutes of prior Fed meetings here:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars....

The Fed learned under Volcker back in the early 80s that prioritizing killing inflation is the best way to ensure medium and long-term economic and employment growth, even if it causes lower growth or recession in the near-term. That’s likely the playbook Powell is operating under now.

Perhaps, but the Fed chair is a political appointment and the politicians learned a different lesson.

Carter appointed Volcker and put America on chemotherapy. He caught blame for both inflation and de-leveraging withdrawal symptoms. Reagan got to take America off chemotherapy and take credit in the popular conscience for both reduced inflation and the re-leveraging boom. The political lesson: putting America on chemotherapy is important but politically somewhere between "thankless" and "suicidal."

When Powell was confirmed, it was with this context in mind. Politicians were thinking "do I want to be the next Carter"? I am worried that they only confirmed Powell because they thought he would not be the next Volcker. Of course, now that he has been confirmed for the next 4 years, he has some freedom to diverge from expectations. We'll see.

In Volker time, federal debt (as a fraction of the GDP) was low, he could raise rates without crippling the budget with interest payments.

With today's federal debt level the fed is screwed: it cannot raise rates even close to inflation without busting the budget and cannot lower them (to fight a recession) without spiking inflation.

My bet is on long term rates-below-inflation period to deflate debts, similar to post-war period in the 1940s. And lots ofrhetoric. But it will be a painful ride.

The Fed does not have the mandate to do what is convenient for the budget. That's not their problem. Obviously this is naive and I'm sure the Fed is under all kinds of pressure, but the Fed is supposed to kill inflation by raising rates to whatever it takes, as long as they don't kill jobs at the same time. The government is supposed to figure something out themselves.

You could also just reduce the money supply by abolishing QE and introducing negative interest rates on liquid deposits and cash.

Then everyone can run a balanced budget and watch their debt melt away.

The reason why we have price controls aka the zero lower bound of interest is that we would rather become eternal debt slaves (money supply has always been growing exponentially even under a gold standard) than face nominal losses that force us to face an umcomfortable truth that from this point onwards you will never earn anything again from owning abundant physical capital and that you will have to work for your own money instead of making others work for it.

The extreme options look like Japan on the one hand and Zimbabwe on the other hand.

We’re not going to land on either extreme but I think it’s clear which is the preferred option.

I would prefer to live in Japan than Zimbabwe. Unfortunately Fed likes the opposite option.

Challenge is when you're facing a recession while also trying to control inflation. See "stagflation" [1].

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stagflation.asp

> Doesn’t a Fed typically lower rates during a recession?

Recessions have weak employment (that's one of the most important factors NBER looks at to determine recession, among the key reasons they have declared two of the last three recessions without two consecutive down GDP quarters, and one of the key reasons the present two consecutive down GDP quarters is arguably not a recession.)

The Fed dual mandate relates to price stability and full employment (it doesn't independently consider recession per se.) It typically lowers rates in a recession to nudge back toward full employment.

Employment remaining strong and inflation remaining high, thought, it raises rates, even if some people think it may be a recession.

> inversion of the eurodollar futures curve

Can anyone enlighten us non-specialists as to how that particular contract works?

Let's see who breaks first.

The real scary moment will be when you see the White House and Democrats re-define what stagflation is.

After all, this is a recession. Inflation is comically high - despite the incredibly massaged CPI number. The third and last criteria for stagflation is high unemployment, which it seems like we're heading into as soon as this last post-lockdown boom in consumer spending falls off a cliff.

Stagflation is very scary and it's going to be either the end of the USD, or further raising rates into a recession. Either way will produce untold suffering and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. And we're going full ESG and trying to make energy (and food) as expensive as possible. This is definitely a first and credit has to go to Western leaders because it really takes talent to self-destroy to this extent.

Yeah stagflation is a lot more scary and some think it's already here.

Well if MMT goes too I’m all for it

How can one profit from this? Any good short positions?

The exact opposite, Buy long positions at a discount

But you need to time the dip with this strategy, otherwise you're underwater in the meantime.

I think the question was, "How can I profit as things get worse?" Or, "What are good ways to protect myself as things go downhill?"

My recommendation? Reduce expenses. And think about investing in ways to reduce those expenses - Toilet paper is expensive, buying a bidet can save money after X uses. Meat can be expensive, see if a farmer in your area is willing to sell you the meat of a full cow at a discount for you to freeze and use over the course of X months.

> But you need to time the dip with this strategy, otherwise you're underwater in the meantime.

Being temporarily underwater is fine, unless you think that economic growth will stop, or you are a day trader.

Dollar cost average if you can.

>My recommendation? Reduce expenses. And think about investing in ways to reduce those expenses

That's funny, I would recommend the exact opposite given the inflationary situation.

I would accelerate buying durable objects that you would like to have eventually, instead of waiting.

Saving money beyond a safety buffer is a bad idea when cash is losing 10% of its value per year and stocks are going down.

Buy SPY, wait 10 years, $$$, Profit.

Is there some science to these observations or are we just reading tea-leaves post-facto?

> To some, this is a recession

Not "to some", two back-to-back negative GDP stats has been the definition of a recession for my entire life. Now suddenly it's questionable, because the current administration would like to shrug away its failures, and too many in the media are helping them do it.

This ad-hoc re-definition of language to suit political purposes is scary and Orwellian.

Has that been the definition, or has that just been your understanding, which may have been wrong? Has there really been a redefinition?

I mean, if we just take Wikipedia as a gauge, they have defined it according to the NBER, dating back to 2008 [1].

  A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.

There does appear to be a recent, ad-hoc redefinition edit battle going on [2][3], but it's to redefine it as you are saying here rather than accepting what has been there for over a decade... apparently for the purpose of using it as a political cudgel [4]. Maybe not so Orwellian, just a misconception.

[1] https://www.nber.org/news/business-cycle-dating-committee-an...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&diff=pr...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Recession

[4] https://twitter.com/RepublicanStudy/status/15516279756401909...

The NBER has called a recession every single time we had two back-to-back quarters of negative growth. The news media is known to aggressively jump to conclusions to produce headlines. It's a notable exception that they are so cautious all of a sudden about what is really a foregone conclusion.

In those instances, were there also declines in real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales? In the current climate, are those things declining? Maybe the answer to those questions help explain the discrepancy.

Real earnings has been in a sharp decline since 2020, now mostly thanks to inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

I don't have the time to link the other stats, but they're not so rosy either, except employment. One good stat and several bad ones is still a recession.

I think that chart shows that things are going back to normal. The reason weekly earnings were at an all time high in q2 of 2020 is because the low wage earners all got laid off because of the pandemic. Now that things are going back to normal, the low wage earners are going back to work at approximately the same real wage (although nominally it's probably a bit higher because of inflation).

That's quite an interesting bias and probably accurate, but one issue you run into here is that wages now are lower than even Q3 2019 which is well before any of this kicked off. And the current trajectory is downward.

So it seems safe to say that real earnings are indeed decreasing, rather than regressing to some past mean.

Also from Wikipedia: While national definitions vary, two consecutive quarters of decline in a country's real gross domestic product is commonly used as a practical definition of a recession.

From the Oxford dictionary (recession): a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.

It's only now that we're seeing all this slimy lawyering about the definition of recession. "Well acksually, technically..."

We can accept that lots of people believe 2 consecutive quarters of GDB decline define a recession, while also admitting that the group that officially defines a recession in the US hasn't done any sort of Orwellian redefinition at all.

It appears, once again, the people trying to refine the word are accusing the people keeping the historical usage as the changers. It's projection all the way down.

That definition was only ever a rule of thumb. The fact is, you can't define it. It's like setting a temperature that is officially "cold". The current economic indicators are almost completely unprecedented in the growth is weak, inflation is very high and yet employment remains historically strong. As much as GDP represents the broadest indicator of economic health, if you're looking for a headline to apply to the masses, it's going to be when we see broad-based negative wealth effects in which case inflation and employment/wages are the most important indicators and they're flying in opposite directions right now. Declaring that this is or isn't a recession is essentially irrelevant. It's officially cold when you feel cold.

What is a recession if not loss of buying power and material wellbeing?

How is more people working for less pay a counterargument against recession.?

All things being equal, more people working is a an increase in buying power. The decreased buying power of wages is only negative relative to the amount people being paid a wage. Which itself is a function of both employment opportunity and size of the labor force. The recent rise in inflation is definitely correlated with a rise in wages albeit at a slightly lower rate resulting in a roughly 1% lag in the past year. If you map out wages paid per GDP you can get an idea of how much of a share of economic growth has been going to workers and it's a been a pretty solid, steady decline since 1970:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Sfun

So, that sucks, but it doesn't make a useful definition of recession. This is the result of massive, global macroeconomic forces. It's basically a slow reset of the post-WWII global order.

Im not sure I follow your argument.

>All things being equal, more people working is a an increase in buying power.

This isnt an absolute. If you have 1 person working for $1/day and go to 2 people for $0.5/day, buying power hasn't changed.

You can have more people working, and people working longer, for less and less material goods.

I think any meaningful definition of economic growth/recession must address the fundamental question of is there more material goods and wellbeing in a country today than yesterday.

I agree that the allocation of those goods is a separate question entirely.

>This is the result of massive, global macroeconomic forces. It's basically a slow reset of the post-WWII global order.

I think that what we are seeing is the start of a realization that part of historic GDP growth was actually a fiction, in that more tangible goods were not produced.

This is why a small increase in wages sent inflation through the roof.

In theory, US real GDP per capita has gone up 33% since 2000[1]. This looks fine on paper as long as the growth is just accumulating in a bank account. Once people actually try to consume more, it becomes obvious that there isn't 33% more stuff to buy.

In the US, the NBER is the institution that calls recessions. The NBER has never once failed to call two consecutive quarters of negative growth as a recession. It's a foregone conclusion at this point.

But wait, according to the mainstream media now, we shouldn't listen to the NBER either, they're all just a bunch of "white economists":

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/30/economy/recession-economists-...

I mean, CNN is basically the left version of Fox News, it’s not representative of center media.

It's closer to the center than the other major news network, MSNBC.

I upvoted you because downvoting to disagree is dumb, but I disagree, CNN is totally way far left.

CNN is indeed way far left. But there are three major news networks - Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Of those, Fox is pretty far right, CNN is far left, and MSNBC is farther left than CNN.

https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Media-B...

Do you have an example of "center media"? Asking because I earnestly want some of that.

The Financial Times is relatively centrist in their coverage.

I usually just read the AP or Reuters. FiveThirtyEight is definitely liberal but I appreciate their numbers perspective as well.

Here's a couple media bias charts. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...

Like other commenter said, AP and Reuters are best at being center / neutral for now.

That's not really a fair comparison. CNN sometimes plays up controversy for eyeballs, but Fox is an outright manipulator. Tucker Carlson is touting fascism and Sean Hannity was literally taking phone calls from the Oval Office asking what they wanted him to say on air. They are also being sued for libel for promoting baseless election fraud conspiracy theories. Saying they're equivalent is like saying a pigeon is like a squid because they both have a beak.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jul/04/fox-oan-newsma... https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/29/politics/hannity-text-message... https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/tucker-carlson-has-s...

CNN headline: Who decides if the US is in a recession? Eight White economists you've never heard of

Is this a joke? It's like something you'd overhear at brunch from a group of co-eds

Now recessions are racists then?

That wouldn't be the implication of a title like that and I suspect you know you're being disingenuous. It would mean that some of our most important decisions are being made by people from a single background that doesn't reflect the makeup of their stakeholders, the American public.

As a thought exercise, would you think it's not notable if the 8 person board was entirely female .. or entirely black?

I would absolutely think it was notable because if I saw “Women Economists” or “Black Economists” I would obviously be concerned the women or black economists are being treated badly.

It’s shocking that you somehow think race or gender can effect the categorization by economists of economic conditions. It’s fairly quantitative situation and I’m at a loss how different backgrounds would effect that analysis.

I mean in your mind ... if all the economists you saw in leadership positions in the US were black I suspect you would think that's notable. That was the thought exercise I was asking you to do.

Black unemployment vs White?

Would a black economist measure black unemployment or white unemployment differently?

>Now recessions are racists then?

Everything else is, so why not?

CNN in January 2020: "Coronavirus task force another example of Trump administration's lack of diversity" <https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/politics/donald-trump-coronav...>

It reads like racism to me.

Was that actually the headline before?

The title I get is the same minus the "white". I wonder if it's A/B testing.

https://imgur.com/a/yW4IXum

I took a screenshot as I had a hunch it would be changed once enough people saw it.

Edit: shows up without the “White” also for me now:

https://imgur.com/a/84X6RKj

I also saw the original headline that said:

> Who decides if the US is in a recession. Eight White economists you've never heard of.

Your conspiracy theory is laughable, primarily because "the current administration" doesn't have any control over the "official" marking of recessions, which is done by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is a private, independent non-profit.

Why does everything you personally don't agree with have to be a "conspiracy theory"? Seems like a trend these days!

The comment I am replying to is pretty clearly arguing that not calling the current situation a recession is due to the current administration not wanting to call it that:

> Now suddenly it's questionable, because the current administration would like to shrug away its failures, and too many in the media are helping them do it.

Whether or not I agree with the assessment of the current administration wanting to "shrug away its failures" has nothing to do with it. The parent comment was clearly arguing the theory, which is total bullshit on its face, that the reason it hasn't been officially designated a recession is because the administration doesn't want it to. The reason this theory is total bullshit is because it's pretty obvious the administration has no control over how the NBER marks recessions.

I think it's fair to designate theories which are total bullshit on their faces as "conspiracy theories".

Imagine for a moment that a recession was something quite rare, but extremely desirable and good. But outside of that difference, all of the current state of the word's definition would remain. Do you honestly believe the current administration wouldn't be parading out that we're in a recession, along with all of the usual media making front page news of it?

So we use the usual rule of thumb to claim it's a recession when it's a good thing, but instead try claim it's not a recession until a given think-tank says so when it's a bad thing.

The whole rationale for this line of argument is just bizarre.

If there is some desire to obfuscate what is actually going on in "the media", well, the media is doing a pretty shitty job of obfuscating it. All the major news outlets have the GDP report as top news stories on their sites. Some easy "liberal media" examples:

1. NYTimes: "G.D.P. Report Shows a Drop, Fanning Fears of a U.S. Recession - A key measure of economic output fell for the second straight quarter, raising fears that the United States could be entering a recession."

2. WaPo: "What causes a recession? The dominoes leading toward a new recession have started falling, so what happens next? There are two scenarios that could play out." And also "U.S. economy shrinks again in 2nd quarter, reviving recession fears", and perhaps very relevant to this discussion, "The 8 economists who decide if the U.S. is in a recession"

So the major news outlets are accurately (and loudly) reporting what is going on. I know in my lifetime it has pretty much always been argued that the official "start and end dates" of recessions are marked after the fact (e.g. I recall clearly the start date for the Great Recession was pushed earlier by the NBER after their research had concluded). But these news outlets certainly aren't hiding anything, nor even trying to dissemble - they're just reporting things as the current facts show.

But then some conspiracy theorists (and yes, I believe that term totally applies) are trying to argue that because news outlets aren't saying "we are officially in a recession" that it is "Orwellian".

If Trump was still the president, these headlines would be "we are in a recession" (which is in fact the case), not "fears of recession". Which we are, per the definition that existed so far. The media has no reason to wait for the NBER to make the exact same call they've made every single time in the past.

Ahh yes, every bit of news reporting that doesn't show the Democrats in the worst possible light, and Trump in the best possible light, is the result of "media bias", facts be damned.

The constant whining by Trump and his supporters over "the media is so mean to me" has long since passed Chicken Little proportions.

By the definitions of "conspiracy" and "theory", this idea that Biden is secretly causing an independent agency do misrepresent economic data is, objectively, a conspiracy theory. If there is some proof it happened, then it would be called a conspiracy.

There is quite a trend toward calling things conspiracy theories these days, but there are more conspiracy theories being spread these days.

I think is is probably due to the well-documented conspiracies between the conservative (and some of the radical liberal) press and foreign propagandists to spread misinformation in the US, and conspiracy theories are an effective way to achieve that goal.

> Why does everything you personally don't agree with have to be a "conspiracy theory"?

This literally invented false historical facts (about the historical official definition of a recession) to support a claim of a political conspiracy (of the media doing Orwellian thought manipulation through language redefinition to support a favored political faction.)

You'll get upvoted and I'll get downvoted because your political bias is the orthodoxy here, but the NBER has officially called a recession every single time we had 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth. It's unreasonable to expect anything else in this case.

If Trump was still president, the media would most definitely be calling this a recession. And they would be correct in doing so.

> the NBER has officially called a recession every single time we had 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth

Because the other indicators they look at (employment, consumption etc.) have been consistent with recession in those cases. They've also called recessions without two consecutive down quarters (either with an up quarter in between, or most recently with a single down quarter), because the other indicators were strongly indicating recession. Right now jobs are up.

Employment is strong, consumption is strong, the 1Q drop (not sure about 2Q because I haven't seeb details yet) was associated with a jump in imports as consumer purchases of imported goods shot up.

Honestly, there's probably a problem with the entire concept of “recession” as a binary label, but the same multidimensional set of factors that has allowed multiple recessions to be determined without two consecutive down quarters supports non-recession with two consecutive down quarters.

> two back-to-back negative GDP stats has been the definition of a recession for my entire life.

No, it hasn't, and two of the last three NBER-identified recessions have not met that definition. It has always been multidimensional, it's just that historically the other factors have always [0] pointed toward recession with two down quarters, and sometimes also without. Having strong employment, etc., despite two down quarters in GDP is a historical aberration.

[0] EDIT: as another poster notes, not always—the 1947 non-recession being an example

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