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US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

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Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#391

Post by tastyfreeze »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #76
boredumb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly obvious there are political bias in american media and always has been. If your party is hostile to increasing federal government or regulatory capture you will be under a microscope and even sacrifice some credibility to attack you, otherwise you can bumble around, redefine common terms, deflect and mislead and have the entirety of relevant and 'trusted' media sources run cover for you indefinitely.

Quoted post unavailable.

There are many people, including me, that are happy with Trump's Supreme Court nominees. As originalists and textualists they are more likely to do their job of keeping the other branches of government to the bounds of the their Constitutional power. Biden's nominee also claims to be an originalist and a textualist. So, I really don't see the point of your complaint. Unless your complaint is that 3 judges were nominated by the red team so they must be red team loyal. Loyalty to a party is not a desirable attribute of a Supreme Court justice. Reducing party loyalty is the reason for lifetime appointment. Once a judge is appointed they have no reason to rule along their nominating party lines.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#392

Post by mym1990 »

partiallypro wrote: post #350
mym1990 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't the economy always been part of a political stance? The economy is one of the top 2/3 factors that people consider when voting, hence being important for re-election. It would be in the best interest of anyone trying to run for election to strategically paint a good/bad picture of the economy. This has been the case probably going back to the 1930s if I were to guess.

It certainly impacts people's votes, but when I go to a news site I don't think in the 70s, 80s, etc you'd find people trying so very hard to say a contracting economy is just a "transition" and not a recession. My point is mostly on what the press is doing in their reporting and trying to protect the current party in power ahead of the mid-terms. I know it would be the opposite if things were reversed, with Fox deny…

I see what you're saying as I reflect on the current landscape of media in general. To be fair I was born in the 90s, so no real idea of what the media landscape was pre-2000s basically. The media now is obviously much different, no internet back in the 70s, news sources were seemingly more trustworthy, there was maybe less political division?

To run a counterpoint though, recessions are self-reinforcing. I think what the Fed has tried to do with all its might is to keep the picture as rosy as possible. Once it is officially out there, companies start cutting budgets, people tighten their wallets anticipating harder times, and it just kind of goes in a few cycles like this.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#394

Post by rustybelt »

njcgbc wrote: post #352
InefficientRed wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, damn near every household bought a new TV during the pandemic lockdowns using their stimulus checks and now no one needs a new TV. I think Walmart's story in particular is one of stupidly bad demand forecasting.

Fast food is reporting the same thing, McDonald's put out a report a few days ago, Yum! Brands is yet to report results for the quarter but similar results are expected. Target had a similar report to Walmart. It is mostly discretionary spending that is down; Wal-Mart reported the largest fall in apparel iirc, but demand is demand. One would expect discretionary spending to fall first, and hopefully it stops there. A…

I know I've cut back on fast food because both product and service quality have declined dramatically, likely due to staffing shortages. Long wait times, cold food, and incorrect orders have pushed me to the point of staying away. It's a weird time, and it's hard to untangle all these additional factors. That said, I'm sure higher prices are having an impact as well.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#395

Post by 9991 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #295
namelessoracle wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why is the Biden admin bragging about lowering prices this summer?

If the other side claims you can control them to score points when they go up, why would you not point out when they go down?

Integrity?

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#396

Post by NeverFade »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #258
NeverFade wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To some, this is a recession Not "to some", two back-to-back negative GDP stats has been the definition of a recession for my entire life. Now suddenly it's questionable, because the current administration would like to shrug away its failures, and too many in the media are helping them do it. This ad-hoc re-definition of language to suit political purposes is scary and Orwellian.

Your conspiracy theory is laughable, primarily because "the current administration" doesn't have any control over the "official" marking of recessions, which is done by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is a private, independent non-profit.

You'll get upvoted and I'll get downvoted because your political bias is the orthodoxy here, but the NBER has officially called a recession every single time we had 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth. It's unreasonable to expect anything else in this case.

If Trump was still president, the media would most definitely be calling this a recession. And they would be correct in doing so.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#397

Post by ffggvv »

partiallypro wrote: post #237

I personally think we're in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance. I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we're in recession while Fox, etc…

yes i have a hard time seeing robert reich arguing that unemployment is what matters if trump was in office and midterms were 4 months away

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#398

Post by shagie »

willcipriano wrote: post #337
jeffbee wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... Please peddle your disinformation elsewhere.

Net exporter under Trump: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-06/u-s-becom... Begging the Saudis under Biden: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/25/1107628743/biden-will-visit-s...

https://epic.uchicago.edu/news/why-do-we-import-russian-and-...

We export light sweet crude.

We don't have the refineries set up to refine that type of oil.

We import sour crude that the refineries set up to process more efficiently in the 90s (before fracking).

Saudi oil is the sour type - and so we import that and the price of Saudi oil has the biggest impact on US gas prices.

To change this around, oil companies in the US need to retool their refineries to the light sweet type that is produced domestically.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#399

Post by NeverFade »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #370
somenameforme wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine for a moment that a recession was something quite rare, but extremely desirable and good. But outside of that difference, all of the current state of the word's definition would remain. Do you honestly believe the current administration wouldn't be parading out that we're in a recession, along with all of the usual media making front page news of it? So we use the usual rule of thumb to claim it's a recession…

The whole rationale for this line of argument is just bizarre. If there is some desire to obfuscate what is actually going on in "the media", well, the media is doing a pretty shitty job of obfuscating it. All the major news outlets have the GDP report as top news stories on their sites. Some easy "liberal media" examples: 1. NYTimes: "G.D.P. Report Shows a Drop, Fanning Fears of a U.S. Recession - A key measure of e…

If Trump was still the president, these headlines would be "we are in a recession" (which is in fact the case), not "fears of recession". Which we are, per the definition that existed so far. The media has no reason to wait for the NBER to make the exact same call they've made every single time in the past.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#400

Post by dragonwriter »

NeverFade wrote: post #396
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conspiracy theory is laughable, primarily because "the current administration" doesn't have any control over the "official" marking of recessions, which is done by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is a private, independent non-profit.

You'll get upvoted and I'll get downvoted because your political bias is the orthodoxy here, but the NBER has officially called a recession every single time we had 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth. It's unreasonable to expect anything else in this case. If Trump was still president, the media would most definitely be calling this a recession. And they would be correct in doing so.

> the NBER has officially called a recession every single time we had 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth

Because the other indicators they look at (employment, consumption etc.) have been consistent with recession in those cases. They've also called recessions without two consecutive down quarters (either with an up quarter in between, or most recently with a single down quarter), because the other indicators were strongly indicating recession. Right now jobs are up.

Employment is strong, consumption is strong, the 1Q drop (not sure about 2Q because I haven't seeb details yet) was associated with a jump in imports as consumer purchases of imported goods shot up.

Honestly, there's probably a problem with the entire concept of “recession” as a binary label, but the same multidimensional set of factors that has allowed multiple recessions to be determined without two consecutive down quarters supports non-recession with two consecutive down quarters.

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