Is the USA in recession?

[Kaitzilla]

Ahem.

BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager — says central banks are 'deliberately' causing recessions and warns of a downturn unlike any other. 3 shockproof assets for your protection

Is there more pain ahead?

finance.yahoo.com

Many experts have already sounded the alarm on the U.S. economy. But you still want to pay attention to what BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager — has to say for a very simple reason: it’s predicting a recession unlike any other.

“Recession is foretold as central banks race to try to tame inflation,” BlackRock’s team of strategists write in their 2023 Global Outlook.

I hope everyone is ready to rumble!

 

[Hygro]

I know that but the traditional definition says differently. I like your explanation better. I just wanted to put the typical key data points out there.

What I'm saying is that 2 quarters isn't "technically" a recession. It never has been. You get a 90% accurate prediction with 2 quarters GDP. That's why it's a reliable heuristic, but a heuristic is not a technicality.

The main data starts with 2 quarters of GDP contraction and isn't a recession. That's how the entire series started! That should set the stage. There's no single definition of a recession but it's definitely not "GDP as we measured it".

We want it to mean something like a loss of volume of trade, the shrinkage of investment, the disemployment of people and resources, and of course more deprecation of stuff and labor skills faster than growth of stuff and labor skills.

We try to measure that with GDP, and it's not bad as a first glance. But GDP doesn't measure it precisely, and we can't even measure GDP precisely. That's two layers of failure and removal before we get to what we are actually technically trying measure.

As such, it was never the technical definition. A game of telephone from economists to the public through newspapers convinced people otherwise.

But again, if you wanted recession to be defined by GDP, two quarters, you would have to 100% no matter what also define it by GDI. No ifs and buts! No wiggling. They're the same number, technically. Actual "technically". And GDI was not negative those two quarters. That discrepancy has to be resolved before any declaration purely based on those numbers makes any sense.