> Now suddenly it's questionable, because the current administration would like to shrug away its failures, and too many in the media are helping them do it.

Whether or not I agree with the assessment of the current administration wanting to "shrug away its failures" has nothing to do with it. The parent comment was clearly arguing the theory, which is total bullshit on its face, that the reason it hasn't been officially designated a recession is because the administration doesn't want it to. The reason this theory is total bullshit is because it's pretty obvious the administration has no control over how the NBER marks recessions.

I think it's fair to designate theories which are total bullshit on their faces as "conspiracy theories".

So we use the usual rule of thumb to claim it's a recession when it's a good thing, but instead try claim it's not a recession until a given think-tank says so when it's a bad thing.

If there is some desire to obfuscate what is actually going on in "the media", well, the media is doing a pretty shitty job of obfuscating it. All the major news outlets have the GDP report as top news stories on their sites. Some easy "liberal media" examples:

1. NYTimes: "G.D.P. Report Shows a Drop, Fanning Fears of a U.S. Recession - A key measure of economic output fell for the second straight quarter, raising fears that the United States could be entering a recession."

2. WaPo: "What causes a recession? The dominoes leading toward a new recession have started falling, so what happens next? There are two scenarios that could play out." And also "U.S. economy shrinks again in 2nd quarter, reviving recession fears", and perhaps very relevant to this discussion, "The 8 economists who decide if the U.S. is in a recession"

So the major news outlets are accurately (and loudly) reporting what is going on. I know in my lifetime it has pretty much always been argued that the official "start and end dates" of recessions are marked after the fact (e.g. I recall clearly the start date for the Great Recession was pushed earlier by the NBER after their research had concluded). But these news outlets certainly aren't hiding anything, nor even trying to dissemble - they're just reporting things as the current facts show.

But then some conspiracy theorists (and yes, I believe that term totally applies) are trying to argue that because news outlets aren't saying "we are officially in a recession" that it is "Orwellian".

The constant whining by Trump and his supporters over "the media is so mean to me" has long since passed Chicken Little proportions.

This literally invented false historical facts (about the historical official definition of a recession) to support a claim of a political conspiracy (of the media doing Orwellian thought manipulation through language redefinition to support a favored political faction.)

There is quite a trend toward calling things conspiracy theories these days, but there are more conspiracy theories being spread these days.

I think is is probably due to the well-documented conspiracies between the conservative (and some of the radical liberal) press and foreign propagandists to spread misinformation in the US, and conspiracy theories are an effective way to achieve that goal.

If Trump was still president, the media would most definitely be calling this a recession. And they would be correct in doing so.

Because the other indicators they look at (employment, consumption etc.) have been consistent with recession in those cases. They've also called recessions without two consecutive down quarters (either with an up quarter in between, or most recently with a single down quarter), because the other indicators were strongly indicating recession. Right now jobs are up.

Employment is strong, consumption is strong, the 1Q drop (not sure about 2Q because I haven't seeb details yet) was associated with a jump in imports as consumer purchases of imported goods shot up.

Honestly, there's probably a problem with the entire concept of “recession” as a binary label, but the same multidimensional set of factors that has allowed multiple recessions to be determined without two consecutive down quarters supports non-recession with two consecutive down quarters.

No, it hasn't, and two of the last three NBER-identified recessions have not met that definition. It has always been multidimensional, it's just that historically the other factors have always [0] pointed toward recession with two down quarters, and sometimes also without. Having strong employment, etc., despite two down quarters in GDP is a historical aberration.

[0] EDIT: as another poster notes, not always—the 1947 non-recession being an example

But wait, according to the mainstream media now, we shouldn't listen to the NBER either, they're all just a bunch of "white economists":

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/30/economy/recession-economists-...

Is this a joke? It's like something you'd overhear at brunch from a group of co-eds

As a thought exercise, would you think it's not notable if the 8 person board was entirely female .. or entirely black?

It’s shocking that you somehow think race or gender can effect the categorization by economists of economic conditions. It’s fairly quantitative situation and I’m at a loss how different backgrounds would effect that analysis.

Everything else is, so why not?

CNN in January 2020: "Coronavirus task force another example of Trump administration's lack of diversity" <https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/politics/donald-trump-coronav...>

The title I get is the same minus the "white". I wonder if it's A/B testing.

I took a screenshot as I had a hunch it would be changed once enough people saw it.

Edit: shows up without the “White” also for me now:

https://imgur.com/a/84X6RKj

> Who decides if the US is in a recession. Eight White economists you've never heard of.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jul/04/fox-oan-newsma... https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/29/politics/hannity-text-message... https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/tucker-carlson-has-s...

https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Media-B...

Like other commenter said, AP and Reuters are best at being center / neutral for now.

How is more people working for less pay a counterargument against recession.?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Sfun

So, that sucks, but it doesn't make a useful definition of recession. This is the result of massive, global macroeconomic forces. It's basically a slow reset of the post-WWII global order.

>All things being equal, more people working is a an increase in buying power.

This isnt an absolute. If you have 1 person working for $1/day and go to 2 people for $0.5/day, buying power hasn't changed.

You can have more people working, and people working longer, for less and less material goods.

I think any meaningful definition of economic growth/recession must address the fundamental question of is there more material goods and wellbeing in a country today than yesterday.

I agree that the allocation of those goods is a separate question entirely.

>This is the result of massive, global macroeconomic forces. It's basically a slow reset of the post-WWII global order.

I think that what we are seeing is the start of a realization that part of historic GDP growth was actually a fiction, in that more tangible goods were not produced.

This is why a small increase in wages sent inflation through the roof.

In theory, US real GDP per capita has gone up 33% since 2000[1]. This looks fine on paper as long as the growth is just accumulating in a bank account. Once people actually try to consume more, it becomes obvious that there isn't 33% more stuff to buy.

(Hint: newspeak was not adding more to the language, was not based on real usage, and was not influenced by public petitions).

Or is this you redefining "Orwellian" and I've missed the joke?

But are we trending toward a Brave New World rather than Oceania?

I mean, if we just take Wikipedia as a gauge, they have defined it according to the NBER, dating back to 2008 [1].

  A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.

[1] https://www.nber.org/news/business-cycle-dating-committee-an...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&diff=pr...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Recession

[4] https://twitter.com/RepublicanStudy/status/15516279756401909...

From the Oxford dictionary (recession): a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.

It's only now that we're seeing all this slimy lawyering about the definition of recession. "Well acksually, technically..."

I don't have the time to link the other stats, but they're not so rosy either, except employment. One good stat and several bad ones is still a recession.

So it seems safe to say that real earnings are indeed decreasing, rather than regressing to some past mean.