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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

We usually critique the movie after the end titles roll.

The titles have rolled. The prediction in Q1 last year was specifically that by this time, the US would be in a deep recession due to tariffs.

I can understand that most people do not actually stay with these forecasts. The story hits NBC, you are completely outraged about this forecast made by these economists, the thing never happens, NBC has moved onto next disaster coming round the corner, next outrage.

If you work in markets, you are confronted with the relentless inability of talking head economists to just say mildly rational things. It is constant, almost every year now we have this latest economic disaster by economists in the periphery of political parties...no-one pays attention to these people, they have tenure, they make money from cashing in their political contacts not through actual correct forecasts (and yes, they always say that the thing they predicted will definitely happen next year now).

Stopped clock is eventually right. But there was literally zero information in the insane claims made in Q1. If you did not see this immediately, don't pay attention to these forecasts.

That's a really nice comment but does not bear in any way on what I wrote. The Trump administration has now completed its first year. There are three to go.

Yes, i am saying very directly that the prediction made was made by many (which is the comment you replied to) that tariffs WOULD HAVE ALREADY caused the economy to fall into a deep recession. These predictions were wrong, they were obviously wrong at the time they were made but that didn't stop the breathless coverage about a coming Great Depression.

Whatever happens next is irrelevant, it won't make that prediction correct.

I'm not unconvinced by the idea that businesses in the US dulled inflation by pulling forward stock purchases and stockpiling goods. But 9 months worth of goods? SMBs can't afford to do that. Large enterprises don't have the warehousing capacity to do that.

Could you imagine Amazon increasing their stock on hand by 30%? Maybe. Could you imagine them quadrupling their stock on hand? Seems unlikely.

Impacts should've shown up by now, most of the stockpiled goods would've been sold down.

I don't know, it seems like there has been a fair amount of reporting about closing or struggling SMBs and farms, and there's also the economy changing to make more and more of the spending come from upper income, which will be less price sensitive and the question of whether various things could have gone down in price otherwise.

The popular zeitgeist seems to reject the inflation numbers because of perceiving it to be higher, too.

I do agree it's probably not inventory, but the frequent changes to the policies may also be part of it too.

And then there is the bit where the reporting agencies can no longer be trusted.

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