The New Definition of Recession

I listened to Jerome Powell’s entire remarks yesterday after the end of the two FOMC meetings which ended on Wednesday. Chairman Powell said some things in his press conference that were astounding.

But the most stunning statement from Jerome Powell was the flat statement the he does not believe the US is in a recession.

The official GDP numbers for the second quarter will be released today. We don’t know what those number will be. But J Powell also went on to say that GDP numbers are complex and they take a long time to get right because the US economy is so huge. They have a history of being revised a lot, and therefore we should take the initial numbers announced today with a grain of salt.

To help us all make sense out of this complexity, the White House put out a new blog post a week ago. The timing was excellent. It was entitled:

“How Do Economists Determine Whether the Economy Is in a Recession?” Let's look deeper at what they're trying to say.

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Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com