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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)

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see who breaks first.

The real scary moment will be when you see the White House and Democrats re-define what stagflation is. After all, this is a recession. Inflation is comically high - despite the incredibly massaged CPI number. The third and last criteria for stagflation is high unemployment, which it seems like we're heading into as soon as this last post-lockdown boom in consumer spending falls off a cliff. Stagflation is very scary…

Well if MMT goes too I’m all for it

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

#412

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…

> How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? Our elites—I don’t mean that pejoratively, but descriptively—used to adhere to institutional values. When I joined a prominent NYC law firm 10 years ago nobody commented on the fact that it was named after someone who argued the pro-segregation other side of Brown v. Board . The institution, not only of…

I am just wondering who the “institutionalists” you speak of were in East Pakistan in 1971.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just looking through the OECD's datasets [0], I see a lot of health care quality and utilization measures missing for the US and many other OECD countries. How are you defining "good effect"? [0] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=49344# I was able to find some incomplete data that suggests the US is pretty good on the metric of wait time, compared to many European countries and Canada: https://www.oecd-ilibra…

I wrote a lot longer explanation but deleted it. Suffice it to say other systems are good enough that functionally no-one wishes they had the US system instead, and it'd sure be weird if every single other OECD state had been relying on price controls this long if they weren't having some beneficial effect. My short-version argument would be—and I'm a little annoyed at having to explain this, because I've been explai…

I am asking you to define "good effect" precisely because it seems to be subject to the kind of cherry picking you don't like.

I'm a median to upper-middle American, and I get great value from my healthcare. It's not obvious to me that a system that raises the experience for mean, or even the bottom end, of the distribution would be a good thing for me in many respects: emergency wait time, access to top percentile specialists, out of pocket costs, just to name a few. It also seems to me that you neglect to factor in that people of means, the world over, come to the US to access care from world leading treatments in many conditions. So they might not want American care in their country, but plenty surely want it for their own bodies.

Put simply: your "good effect" often smuggles in assumptions about which part of the curve to treat, and implicitly undervalues degradation of the status quo for others. You, as is the habit of liberals, would like to have a debate wherein your moral values about who deserves what and who should be deprived, is taken for granted. I'm sorry, it's not immediately obvious to me that a system where 10,000 people wait 6-12 months for lifesaving operations is better than one where 1,000 people can get the operation in a month and the other 9,000 might have to go into debt to do the same.

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

#414
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, if it looks like a recession and quacks like a recession then it might be a recession. And yes it much more complicated - especially it also depends on how much outside pressure NEBR has. I think there is a large pressure not to declare recession since we still have a high inflation and feds needs to continue raising rates.

What if it looks like a bug and it sounds like a humming noise? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/opinion/employment-wages-...

That’s not what the Phantom Tollbooth told me.

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

#415
post #69
post #43

> Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022 (table 1), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 percent. That makes two back-to-back quarters of real GDP contraction. To some, this is a recession, but it's the NBER that puts the stamp on it. AFAIK, NBER has never failed…

Doesn’t a Fed typically lower rates during a recession? At least at some point, in order to bring a country out of the recession.

> Doesn’t a Fed typically lower rates during a recession?

Recessions have weak employment (that's one of the most important factors NBER looks at to determine recession, among the key reasons they have declared two of the last three recessions without two consecutive down GDP quarters, and one of the key reasons the present two consecutive down GDP quarters is arguably not a recession.)

The Fed dual mandate relates to price stability and full employment (it doesn't independently consider recession per se.) It typically lowers rates in a recession to nudge back toward full employment.

Employment remaining strong and inflation remaining high, thought, it raises rates, even if some people think it may be a recession.

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

#416

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 also find it pathetic. However the press is open to enterprising individuals. We don’t have to keep patronizing the same lousy news outlets. Who’s got the real scoop these days?

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

#417
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fast food is pricing itself out of the market. I think it's a great example of a sector that failed to innovate and is now incapable of providing a product worth buying at prices that are profitable.

McDonalds et al. probably should've been investing a lot more in automating their kitchens. The fact that a huge percent of locations -- and all drive-thrus -- still use humans for the ordering process is, similarly, inexcusable.

Unless the US massively increases its low-skilled immigration quotes, robotics firms will be the FAANG equivalents of the 2020s-2030s.

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

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the word recession thrown around plenty in the press; who's avoiding saying it? As pointed out by another commenter the NBER has never failed to declare a recession after two consecutive quarters of GDP reduction. This is a preliminary report, I would expect them to wait for the full report to actually declare it. These things work a certain way. Whether that way is good or bad isn't relevant to this partic…

> As pointed out by another commenter the NBER has never failed to declare a recession after two consecutive quarters of GDP reduction. That isn't 100% accurate. There is 1 example from 1947 where we had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP, but positive jobs, positive industrial production and positive consumer spending and NBER doesn't consider it a recession. 2001 was the opposite. It was called a recession wi…

> 2001 was the opposite. It was called a recession without consecutive 2 quarters of negative GDP growth.

Also 2020, and that wasn't even two down quarters with a gap; the whole recession was 2 months long.

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

#419

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…

[deleted]

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we are in a recession. >How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? Because the actual data is sending mixed signals. People equate recessions with job losses, but job growth is still high and unemployment remains incredibly low. Businesses equate recessions with reduced demand for goods and and services, yet demand remains strong enou…

They are not mixed signals, the data we use for signaling is flawed for the modern area Take for example the U-3 unemployment number that you cite, what is missing from that is Workforce Participation, we have a pretty large drop-off in Work force participation which is leading to the false belief that employment is "fine", and the quote "mix signal" of being in a recession while still having lower unemployment. Comp…

> what is missing from that is Workforce Participation,

Sure, but the statement I made was job growth ways high AND unemployment remained low. The AND is important for the very reason you point out; U-3 is not a useful stand alone metric. Combining it with job growth data helps provide a better picture of the job market.

Employment still grew by 375,000 jobs last month. This was far above expectations.

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