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We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

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Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#171

Post by bmitc »

_hhkc wrote: post #125
bmitc wrote: post #23

It won’t be just a year or two. This is going to have long term repercussions. Basically everyone from the age of 5 to 22 will have a year or two of missing education. We’re losing tons of immigrants and non-immigrant foreign workers, of the latter many of which are doctors or advanced degree holders. Many Chinese are simply leaving the U.S. on their own accord, even if they aren’t caught up in the travel bans or oth…

If and when Trump gets voted out of office or finishes his second term, we will have another Trump-like candidate. His cult of personality is here to stay for generations to come.

I think what Trump's presidency has shown, if only because he is a catalyst for hate and ignorance and little else, is that the sentiments that drove the civil war never actually went away and have probably gotten worse and drifted even further apart. His presidency gave a conduit for these things to bubble up to the surface. And there's a certain political party that partially shares the more hateful sentiments but also just wants to profit from them and manipulate the very people who are a subset of people that their policies hurt.

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#172

Post by AnimalMuppet »

lostmsu wrote: post #143
tsimionescu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the EU had about 130k deaths itself. If you add the UK to that, you get just as many as the US basically (172k vs 180k). So I don't think the EU really did much better than the US in this regard, overall. There are exceptions in specific countries, especially in some of the more Eastern countries, and Germany to some extent, but overall the EU countries did as badly as the US. Not to mention that the EU its…

You need to look at per capita numbers.

Yes, and? thisisliff said what the per-capita numbers said; do you dispute them?

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#173

Post by Rury »

save_ferris wrote: post #104
sfblah wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very reasonable comment. Social sciences are frustratingly imprecise. But, understanding the history of various scenarios is useful. And, it can result in useful policy changes which avoid the worst, as you mentioned.

The problem I have with economics after reading Debt: The 5000 years by David Graeber[0] (solid read, btw) is that the field was founded on some fundamentally flawed assumptions about its own history. The biggest one being that there's no evidence that a barter economy preceded a cash economy. We've all been taught that this was the case when there's no evidence it was true and there are a lot of unexplained problems…

Good points, economics as a field certainly has its flaws. Many assumptions of history are also likely made in other fields as well. But even that said, I don't see why the alternatives put forth in "Debt: The first 5000 years" aren't also just that - assumptions...

I'll also just say one thing for the concept of bartering: I don't think bartering requires equitable trade in value. It's just of matter of two people getting what they want. As for an example, my grandfather bartered his land up until 2013 when he died. He owned a farm, but he didn't farm it. Instead he let his neighbor farm it for profit, in exchange for one of his neighbor's cows that we butchered for meat each year. Was this equitable in value? Probably not, but look at it this way: our family received free steaks that lasted us almost a year, every year and it costed us nothing - my grandfather still owned the land and he never planned on farming it. And on the flip side, his neighbor got to grow and sell substantially more crops without having to buy land... (albeit at the minor cost of a cow each year, but was nonetheless was profitable for him)

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#174

Post by idoh »

freeone3000 wrote: post #4

If only there was a term for a prolonged economic retraction, like a recession, but longer and worse.

I like the terminology "y-shaped recovery". Basically, everything goes down at the start, then some things (and new things) emerge, and other things never recover.

This seems like a more accurate way to think about the economy, in that new industries will emerge and some industries are going to never really recover.

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#175

Post by jamie_ca »

chrisco255 wrote: post #155
mywittyname wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, economies aren't easy to control: We can't even get people to wear masks even though the economic impact of not doing so is obvious and relatively straight-forward to calculate. An economist could come from the year 2100 with 500TB of economic data and news for the past 100 years, and there's a 0% chance that the public would ever heed their warnings.

Not at all. Sweden never wore masks and never shut down schools and yet they achieved comparable results to draconian lockdowns. They already have herd immunity. It's likely we would get 2 economists from the year 2100 both giving opposite reasons for the next 80 years of events.

Sweden's got 10m people, and 87k cases as of mid-Aug. That's less than 1%, so claiming "herd immunity" is BS. They also have almost 6k deaths. Analysis from a month ago projects Sweden's GDP falling 4.8% in 2020, and eyes a 3.6% growth in 2021 - overall down 1.4% across both years.

Denmark's got a little over half the population, 1/5 the cases, 1/9 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 5.1% this year, up 4.0% next year, overall down 1.3%.

Norway's got half the population, 1/11 the cases, 1/22 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 4.7% this year, up 3.7% next year, overall down 1.2%.

If you're saying Sweden didn't lock down and achieved comparable economic results to their neighbours, I'd say yes you're right. A little bit worse on GDP, but very comparable. But they also had thousands more deaths, and tens of thousands more cases with uncertain futures, to no economic _benefit_ that I can see.

Sources: - https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus-covid-19-in... - https://www.focus-economics.com/regions/nordic-economies

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#176

Post by idoh »

realmod wrote: post #47
jug wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was just about to say this. My equity funds are back to ≈85% before pandemic on average. One of them is better than before it. And that is coming from a very highly valued market due for a correction for years.

Stock market =/= economy. I think a big part of the gains is that everyone is flush with cash with nowhere to invest since the interest rates are basically non-existant/negative.

The stock market isn't the economy right now, but in the long run it is meant to approximate the net present value of a big chunk of the economy.

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#177

Post by TheCowboy »

TheCowboy wrote: post #81
hirundo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Economists are as effective as astrologists at predicting the future. That's not fair. Paul Krugman has predicted seven of the last three recessions.

There was a study comparing the accuracy of predictions made by pundits, and Krugman came out as one of the best.

Here is the data if you want to judge for yourself:

https://www.hamilton.edu/news/polls/pundit

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#178

Post by ttul »

TheCowboy wrote: post #92

The grandstanding against economists is disappointing. Let's say you were driving at night with someone in the country, and because they either knew the road or could see farther ahead they said, "There's a boulder in a road ahead, we're likely going to hit it if you don't slow down and turn to avoid it." And you do slow down and it allows you to turn to avoid a crash. How do you respond? Mock them for always being w…

This is why it's referred to as "the dismal science".

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#179

Post by AnimalMuppet »

quintushoratius wrote: post #165
AngrySkillzz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backing you up here. There is a clearregime change in the data before and after the advent of central banking. Recessions and financial panics are less frequent, and less severe. Just looking at the US, there were ~15 recessions since the adoption of central banking in the 1910's. In the same time period during the 1800s there were >25 recessions, and that's not even comparing for severity. You can see the Wiki[1] fo…

It's also worth mentioning that older folks alive during the Great Depression had a perspective on it vs the panics during the 19th century. Many observed that the Great Depression, which was the worst in a generation, was tough but manageable compared to the Panic of 1983 where people literally could not buy food.

s/1983/1893/.

Re: We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say

#180

Post by woobar »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #131
danhak wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the market worth more now in Yen, Indian Rupees etc? Or are people just willing to part with more USD (that asset specifically) for the underlying asset (the stock)? Those are...pretty easy questions to answer. The dollar is down about 10% since its March high compared to a basket of other major currencies: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy

Can you help me figure out the maths on that. So how much of the stock gain is from currency devaluation (against other currencies) and how much is due to appreciation (of investors willing to pay more real value) ? Say .INX was 3250 in Jan and is 3500 now. -> 7.7% increase. But currency has lost about 10% of its underlying value. If something loses 1/10th of it's value we expect people to pay 11% (1/.9) more of that…

GP mentioned 10% drop from the _March_ highs, not from the January. S&P 500 grew 50%+ since March lows.
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