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Comment by NeverFade | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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

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.

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.

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