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Most of the US economy is in a recession

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Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#91

Post by bluegatty »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #74
vesrah wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this video pretty interesting, it talks about why Iran is going after its neighbors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIS2eB-rGv0

Over confidence and linear explanations. I am not impressed.

Yes, he's informational but a bit conspiratorial. These people are valid points of interest - it's worth entertaining facts and perspectives that are not well highlighted in the media. Even though they are usually kind of wrong.

The truth is nobody is really fully in charge, there are competing interests everywhere, Trump is making the decisions but even he changes his mind very frequently and objectives are not clear.

It's really hard to understand intentions when decisions have to be made in a reactive manner as well.

Rubio indicated 'we had to attack, because Israel was going to go first, and we were going to lose the element of surprise'. While that is an absurd and crazy reason to 'go to war' - it's actually a very rational tactic for 'when to start' as 'first mover advantage' is enormous in conflict. You can see how 'the most powerful entity on earth' is moved by events beyond it's control.

It's almost better to describe these situations in terms of all of the factions capabilities, influence, power, motivations than it is to say 'this is why it's happening'.

Once conflicts start, they have a way of perpetuating themselves in a 'circularly reactive' way, it fuels itself as both sides have difficulty standing down.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#92

Post by gruez »

alexpotato wrote: post #75

I'm always somewhat puzzled by debates around "are we in a recession?" b/c we have so many REAL TIME metrics around what people are actually doing. e.g. credit card companies have excellent data on the amount that people are spending on. Is that not enough to determine if people are spending more or less than in the past? I understand there are seasonal trend etc etc but even "how is spending on travel this year comp…

https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/gdpnow

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#93

Post by m-hodges »

gruez wrote: post #90
m-hodges wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this. They don’t. Recessions in the United States are generally demarcated by NBER.¹ ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...

>It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this. No, not any more than "the pandemic started under the Trump administration" implies that they caused the pandemic.

I just plainly disagree that a casual reader wouldn’t see the phrase “revoked under Biden” and believe it meant that Biden did the revoking.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#94

Post by lumost »

YokoZar wrote: post #14

What's the base rate? Even a very healthy economy doesn't have all sectors growing simultaneously, so I'd be very curious to know if this is a matter of going from "normally 20% is shrinking and now it's 80%" or if it's "normally 49% is shrinking and now it's 51%"

Prices, and feelings about the economy are set at the margin. A 1% change in employment doesn't sound world ending on its own, but the relative power balance between labor and management pushes wages down across the economy.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#95

Post by vel0city »

wcoenen wrote: post #83
kasey_junk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese solar panels don’t help with plastics or industrial lubricants.

There is not going to be any shortage of plastics in the medium term. Shale oil and gas production in the US produces vast quantities of ethane as a byproduct. This ethane is cracked into ethylene, a feedstock for making plastic. There is an oversupply of the stuff.

The overabundance is a big part of why it's just not commercially viable to do much with recycled plastic. Places will practically give away the virgin material because they have to find someplace for it to go to keep producing other things.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#96

Post by _23sd »

During the Biden administration there was a whole campaign to try and get Wikipedia to recognize the recession that had been declared by Fox News pundits. The liberals are characteristically more creative with their version, but it still sounds like partisan wishful thinking (awfully nihilistic, too). One could slice and dice the numbers any number of ways and it could fool a layman like me no problem. The best defense I know of is to ignore any analysis that tries to change the definition of a recession.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#97

Post by lumost »

rngfnby wrote: post #40
state_less wrote: post #13

Oil spiked to $110/barrel on the WTI front month futures contract this afternoon, a $20 jump up from Friday. At this pace we'll be at $150 a barrel in a week or two. If oil infrastructure keeps getting hit, even if the strait of hormuz is reopened, it'll take a long time to recover from. That's on top of the continued call for regressive tariffs and a weakening labor market. I think we're heading for a recession unle…

My understanding is that, until the hits on Tehrans oil storage sites yesterday, the oil infrastructure has been spared. Nothing that isn't easy to repair. Ie the price increase we've seen so far os mostly pricing the closing of the staits and the risk of reduced production production is halted due to running out of storage (ie akin to a cpu "pipeline stall". But Iran got hit badly yesterday, with tar raining on the…

The US is not acting rationally on Iran, this is on top of a history of acting irrationally with regards to past treaties. The game theorists would tell you that Iran should impose costs for this in one way or another, the main avenue of which is economic costs. Iran may extend this cost imposition to US aligned states throughout the Gulf.

It's a mess with limited exit ramps, Iran can likely keep bombing their neighbors and shipping blocked for years if they so choose.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#98

Post by amazingamazing »

2023 - "The US is already in a 'rolling recession'": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/recession-mi...

2024 - vibe cession: https://www.businessinsider.com/consumers-pessimistic-on-eco...

2025 - "a recession in 2025": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/2025-stock-m...

people just so desperately want the USA to be in a recession it seems.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#99

Post by abraxas »

vrosas wrote: post #31
eunos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Trump goes Taco, Khamenei Jr won't accept. Remember the adversary also get a vote.

Mojtaba will be dead within a month. What would it say about the entire operation if they just backed off and let Khamenei’s son take over?

It would tell us that they are incompetent buffoons which is exactly what they are.

Re: Most of the US economy is in a recession

#100

Post by lovich »

gruez wrote: post #90
m-hodges wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this. They don’t. Recessions in the United States are generally demarcated by NBER.¹ ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...

>It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this. No, not any more than "the pandemic started under the Trump administration" implies that they caused the pandemic.

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