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U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

wsj.com

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Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#61

Post by dntrkv »

usrn wrote: post #45
dntrkv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, remember the civil war of 1982? When inflation was 14% and The Fed raised rates to purposefully start a recession? Give me a break, we’ve been through much worse. Let’s stop with the FUD please.

People got along a lot better with their neighbors in the 80s than they do now.

I think you’re confusing people’s online rhetoric with their IRL interactions. If there was no civil war after 2008, there sure as hell won’t be one this time when people are doing better by most metrics.

American’s financial situations are actually quite good right now. Everybody is just anxious as fuck, for many reasons.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#62

Post by throwaway0a5e »

pjc50 wrote: post #49

Always wondering exactly what people mean when they talk of "civil unrest", and who and how will it start. Do the various riots in 2020 America or the Jan 6 storming of the capitol count? On the other hand, Elon Musk Twitter purchase: $44bn. There's plenty of money out there still. I think it's unlikely that merely raising rates will do anything, for two reasons: firstly there's a real need to do some fiscal policy a…

>Always wondering exactly what people mean when they talk of "civil unrest", and who and how will it start. Do the various riots in 2020 America or the Jan 6 storming of the capitol count?

A whole lotta people, mostly outside the HN demographics, are real pissed off about a decade of public policy that has amounted to making their lives worse and worse at every juncture and now it's finally getting to the point where ends are hard to meet.

I am not dumb enough to try to make specific predictions but that's a pretty substantial powder keg.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#63

Post by newaccount2021 »

bko wrote: post #28
recursivedoubts wrote: post #9

Shows just how sensitive our economy is to small interest rate fluctuations, having lived around the zero bound for over a decade. We've encouraged everyone to lever out as far as possible while at the same time making real production more and more difficult (or, during the early lock downs, impossible) and, well, the long run is here. Keynes was right: he's dead. Unfortunately, we, and our children, are not.

> We've encouraged everyone to lever out as far as possible Household debt to GDP has gone down since the low interest rate environment kicked off in 2010. Same is true for household debt as a percentage of personal income. Although I will note that its debt payments, not absolute amount of debt and obviously lower rates lower the interest portion of debt payments. I agree there is something troubling going on but it…

No post body was provided.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#64

Post by incomingpain »

boringg wrote: post #34
incomingpain wrote: post #2

GDP: -1.4% DOW: -8.36% YTD S&P500: -12.22% YTD NASDAQ: -20.17% YTD Inflation: 8.5% Interest rate: 0.5%(increasing once by 0.25%) Balance of trade: $-89.2B >they still think the Fed will be able to rein in inflation without triggering a recession. It was raised once and everything is collapsing underneath. Don't know how you look at all this and think 'it'll be fine'. There's a general rule that this kind of behaviour…

I think you are living too deep in your fears - lots of doom and gloom here. There isn't anything relative to a food shortage about to happen in the US and certainly we aren't on the cusp of a civil war. DC is actually less acrimonious than it was. The equity market is not the economy and a lot of the financial websites make money on hyping up the latest quarterly numbers. Are there concerns here? Yes, there always a…

No post body was provided.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#65

Post by miohtama »

lumost wrote: post #40
bko wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've encouraged everyone to lever out as far as possible Household debt to GDP has gone down since the low interest rate environment kicked off in 2010. Same is true for household debt as a percentage of personal income. Although I will note that its debt payments, not absolute amount of debt and obviously lower rates lower the interest portion of debt payments. I agree there is something troubling going on but it…

There are many troubling things happening at the moment. From a US centric point of view. - Inflation is at it's highest since the 1970s in the US - There is a large military conflict in Europe. - There are shortages of chips, energy, and food on the horizon. - Unprofitable growth stocks have valuations as high as 100:1 on revenue. - There is increasing militarized tension on many portions of the global supply chain…

There is also financialization that has been going for a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

Finance industry share going up vs. Real economy output, which could be cause or the consequence of high valuations.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#66

Post by usrn »

dntrkv wrote: post #61
usrn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People got along a lot better with their neighbors in the 80s than they do now.

I think you’re confusing people’s online rhetoric with their IRL interactions. If there was no civil war after 2008, there sure as hell won’t be one this time when people are doing better by most metrics. American’s financial situations are actually quite good right now. Everybody is just anxious as fuck, for many reasons.

An odd thing to say after people spent the last couple summers burning things down

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#67

Post by BitwiseFool »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #32
incomingpain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arab spring is a more modern example. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russia-bread-food-pr... https://medium.com/something-about-everything/food-riots-and... >My sense is that civil wars are when states/governments fight, not hungry people. You could have stopped at civil unrest. What happens when food is scarce and people are starving for possibly the first time in their life? Anxiety, depression, etc is wel…

Having a well-functioning democracy is probably the best insulation against this. You don't need a civil war when you can vote for a different government.

>"You don't need a civil war when you can vote for a different government."

This is one of those things that works perfectly in principle but does not seem to work in practice. I've lived in solidly red or blue districts all my life and in only one election did the party representation switch to a different team. That was only because blue team had two top-tier names splitting the vote which allowed a red team representative to win the special election. They were defeated in the next general election by a landslide.

Furthermore, I also see Congress as having a single digit to low teen approval rating as evidence that being unhappy with one's government does not correlate with actually getting "a different government". Without getting into a long drawn out discussion of why this is the case, I nevertheless think that voting is not the solution it is touted to be.

Edit: I still vote regularly and I encourage others to do so as well. It's not a totally hopeless situation but people should have realistic expectations and expect to be disappointed.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#68

Post by newaccount2021 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #16
recursivedoubts wrote: post #9

Shows just how sensitive our economy is to small interest rate fluctuations, having lived around the zero bound for over a decade. We've encouraged everyone to lever out as far as possible while at the same time making real production more and more difficult (or, during the early lock downs, impossible) and, well, the long run is here. Keynes was right: he's dead. Unfortunately, we, and our children, are not.

The US Fed didn’t raise interest rates until March, much too late to cause this number.

No post body was provided.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#69

Post by germinalphrase »

gsibble wrote: post #44
altacc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a non-US perspective, it seems that a lot of Americans are quick to conclude that a civil war is around the corner, even on HN where one would hope for a more nuanced analysis. There can't be that many boogaloo boys on this forum, so I wonder how common this narrative is in the US at the moment to make it a go-to conclusion. Is it really common to hear talk of this in the US? From what I see of human nature, mos…

There are a lot of very angry conservatives who are getting angrier by the day. And they own the vast majority of the guns.

That cohort is still a numerical minority and while they may own the majority of civilian firearms, the United States government absolutely owns the majority of effective weapons. That said, calling the potential conflict a “domestic insurgency” is not much of a comfort compared to “civil war” even if the former is unlikely to be an existential threat to the country.

Re: U.S. economy shrank at a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter

#70

Post by inglor_cz »

omginternets wrote: post #51
matthewdgreen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe also losing 1.1 million people (according to the CDC's "excess deaths" website) wasn't that good for our economy either.

I really don’t want to sound calloused because caring for the weak and the elderly is a pillar of civilizations, but my impression was that the bulk of “excess deaths” were not among the most economically active populations. I could just as easily see this having the opposite economic effect: reducing the burden on the state for such things as retirement and Medicaid.

This. Economic consequences do not necessarily track our moral preferences.
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