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Comment by enriquec | Hacker News Reader

Recession = two quarters of negative growth. We've had a lot more. I'm not playing with the kafkaesque political redefinitions and find them pretty pathetic actually.

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They've been playing games with the numbers but it's true, we're looking at a depression not a recession as it's going to last much longer. US debt t GDP ratio > 120% which by IMF definition means the US is in an economic death spiral. By 2028 the payments we make on all that money they printed (at our expense) will only go to the interest and no longer the principal. After that the death spiral becomes irreversible with US insolvency by 2042. Historically, inside the next ten years is when we have a depression/massive austerity for everyone, war, and/or a new monetary system. Which if you ask me is more stupid and irresponsible than a balanced budget amendment and single line item spending bills. Social Security will be insolvent in 10 years, too, and I've also heard the medicare liabilities ae being hidden because they paint an even darker picture about how far gone things are.

We've known this for a while BTW, I first learned about the timeline in 2014 watching the budget committee hearing on CSPAN. They showed the slide with the timeline yet no one talked about it. Austerity back then was scheduled to start by 2020 but we got stimulus, like they were steering into driving off the cliff.

This guy wrote and updated his book on the topic. https://www.amazon.com/COMING-COLLAPSE-AMERICA-BALANCE-FEDER...

The economy has been growing in 2023 though

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

consolidated economic activity has been growing massively, while Main Street continues to fail. how is this "us" or "we" .. investors here tell one side of a story.. look at the cities where people live.

They aren't "kafkaesque political redefinitions". You are just choosing to use an overly simple definition because it supports your argument. The NBER determines recession based on a sophisticated methodology. One that considers the holistic status of the economy. This whole "two quarters of negative growth" is unga bunga economics

So then it's not a recession solely according to NBER - and this departs from their characterizations for the last 60 years before this last election cycle.

"A recession is a significant, widespread, and prolonged downturn in economic activity. A common rule of thumb is that two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth mean recession, although more complex formulas are also used."

- [investopedia]("https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/recession.asp#:~:text=W....")

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