The White House looking to prevent a recession has decided that they won’t improve policy decisions, instead, they’ll just change what ‘recession’ is defined as.
Typically a recession is two back-to-back quarters of negative GDP growth. According to Forbes, this is how economist Julius Shiskin defined the word in 1974, and this is generally how the term has been defined since.
The Biden White House in an attempt to save their skin and prevent the word ‘recession’ from being used.
“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,” the official White House website says.
The White House says that the real definition is “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months,” which is pretty similar and really still applies to the current situation despite their denials.
The United States is currently experiencing record inflation at 9.1%. This is the highest inflation has been in 40 years. The government is also experiencing a supply chain crisis while it fights its war on oil and won’t stop spending on packages that don’t benefit the American people.
“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,” the White House website reads.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen maintains that the United States is in a “period of transition” rather than a recession.