Is it time to start using the scary “d word” yet? … depression<p>It’s been half a year of ostrich like behaviour and borderline paradoxical (but understandable though certain lenses) stock market responses while economies around the world are sliding downhill like they are all practicing for the Winter Olympics.<p>It’s sort of hard to look at the situation and think “this won’t end up with economic depression” … it’s looming up on the horizon as we get deeper into the reality of a global recession (can we call it a global one yet?) maybe not in the USA, but perhaps the UK, or somewhere else that feeling the current situation more acutely.
I've been thinking about how these economic conditions, while they meet every criteria of a severe recession, are vastly different for the average person than any I can think of in modern history.<p>In a typical recession GDP is down, unemployment is up, wages are being driven down, and companies have stockpiles of unsold inventory because nobody has money to buy things. In this recession GDP is down, we're at full employment, wages are being driven up, companies have empty inventory due to supply chain issues, and consumers are standing around holding cash waiting for someone to offer products for sale.<p>I think GDP is down because a lot of workers retired or otherwise left the workforce at once so companies don't have enough people to get work done. Supply chain issues mean manufacturers and retailers don't have products to sell, which also impacts GDP. Cost of living is certainly up which impacts the average person, but honestly that wouldn't be such a problem if companies were setting wages in response to market conditions as opposed to stubbornly keeping them low as if a bunch of people who want to work for minimum wage will magically appear.
US has already had two quarters of negative GDP growth. <a href="https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product" rel="nofollow">https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product</a><p>Bloomberg is 100% right.
By the classic definition and trends in our industries like layoffs, I think we all know it's already here regardless of the election related word games.
<a href="https://archive.ph/C7REn" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/C7REn</a><p>Has bloomberg claimed to know the future 1 year in advance with 100% probability before?