Full Video ‪@AIER_‬ :    • Is the US in a Recession?  

We have seen the definitions of many words change over the past few years for political and ideological reasons, and some have even been lost altogether. We can now add recession to the list.

In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Phil Magness, editorial and research director at AIER, aptly points out that “An economic downturn is a political problem, so the White House is playing semantics by redefining the term.”
www.wsj.com/articles/redefining-the-r-word-recessi…

Phil writes,

“Rather than tackling the underlying economic problems, the White House is playing word games.

Economists have long defined a recession as “a period in which real GDP declines for at least two consecutive quarters,” to quote the popular economics textbook by Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus. This definition isn’t perfect, but it describes almost every downturn since World War II.

With expectations of low or even negative growth for the first two quarters of 2022, President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers has been trying to blunt the news by disavowing this textbook definition. It is “neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” reads a post on the White House website. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen endorsed the claim on NBC over the weekend.”

Kate Wand explores the implications of redefining the meaning of words in a post-truth society, using Phillip Magness' essay on the White House attempt at redefining the term recession.

After "transitory" inflation, will we experience a "transitory" recession?

Creators: Kate Wand & Will Gervais

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