Peter Schiff Believes the Government Will No Longer Have an Objective Standard to Define Recession
Jose Nino
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Earlier this week, the Biden regime tried to redefine what constitutes an economic recession. A report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis revealed that the US economy contracted by 1.6% in the first quarter of 2022.
There have been conflicting economic forecasts for the second quarter. According to Bloomberg projections, the US economy is expected to grow by a mere 0.5%, while economists at Goldman Sachs project 0.7% growth.
Similarly, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow is predicting an additional GDP contraction of 1.6% for the second quarter. If these numbers hold up, the American economy will have gone through two back-to-back quarters of falling GDP — the textbook definition of a recession.
On June 28, 2022, the BEA published a report that GDP dropped 0.9% in the second quarter of 2022. With two consecutive quarters of negative GDP movement, America’s recessionary status is official.
Hilariously, the White House Council for Economic Advisers published a blog post on July 21, 2022 to try to pre-empt speculation about the US officially entering a recession:
What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession.
Subsequently on July 24, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asserted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if the US economy contracted in Q2 that does not signify the US is experiencing a recession.
“I do want to emphasize: What a recession really means is a broad-based contraction in the economy. And even if that number is negative, we are not in a recession now. And I would, you know, warn that we should be not characterizing that as a recession” Yellen stated.
In light of the Biden’s regime spin on what constitutes an actual economic recession, contrarian economist Peter Schiff noted that the government will no longer have an objective standard for defining a recession. He tweeted on July 29, 2022, “It’s likely that the U.S. economy will never be in a #recession again. If we no longer have an objective standard to define one, government will always be able to find some excuse to claim the economy isn’t in one. Ironically, we’re not in a recession now. We’re in a #depression.”
It's likely that the U.S. economy will never be in a #recession again. If we no longer have an objective standard to define one, government will always be able to find some excuse to claim the economy isn't in one. Ironically, we're not in a recession now. We're in a #depression.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) July 29, 2022
Schiff may have a point here. We live in a post-fact era where the government manipulates data and the corporate media provides an erroneous spin on the data to soothe the population into believing that things are A-OK. As US living standards start falling, expect more government agencies and pundits to try to paint narratives that are in complete conflict with reality.
However, people on the ground, who likely don’t possess fancy degrees, will see things differently as customer service declines, infrastructure gives out, food prices soar, and energy costs become more burdensome.
This is the future that awaits America if America First leadership does not take the reins of power in Washington DC.
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