The United States is in a recession regardless of if Joe Biden and his administration want to identify it as such.
Our economy shrank for a second straight quarter by an annualized rate of 0.9%. And despite the desperate attempts to redefine the r-word by the White House, growth is indisputably on the downward trend.
“The decrease in real GDP reflected decreases in private inventory investment, residential fixed investment, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by increases in exports and personal consumption expenditures (PCE),” the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explained.
“Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased,” they reported.
The White House has been flip-flopping on terms and definitions all week in a shameless attempt to reassure Americans that there is nothing to worry about regarding the economy.
This whole debacle has escalated so quickly that a Wikipedia administrator had to place a pause on edits to the site’s “Recession” page by unregistered users until early August.
This is because the page was reportedly edited 41 times in the past seven days with various and repeated attempts to alter the standard definition. Additionally, site admins labeled many of the site changes as “vandalism” and or “malicious” content.
One editor, for example, who goes by “Soibangla” deleted additions numerous times and even went as far as to claim “there is no global consensus on” what a recession is.
So before too long, it became a battle between Wikipedia editors to change the wording of the page to reflect either the standard definition or the weird made-up word salad one from the White House.
“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,” the White House wrote earlier this week in a blog post.
“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,” the blog post continued. “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.”
All throughout the week, there has been example after example of the White House dodging the recession label for the economy.
For instance, on Tuesday, the president’s econ advisor Brian Deese was asked to explain the health of the US economy right now. His response? America is facing a “unique” transition. One where residents will have to suffer a little for the foreseeable future until things get better.
“Well, we’re in a transition, and it feels unique, because it is unique,” Deese said on MSNBC.
Wikipedia administrator, “Anarchyte,” had to pause all additions to the site’s page due to “persistent addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content.” Now all edits must be confirmed by trusted users.
This verification process could take weeks, if not months.
