I hold a BS in Econ and even I was shocked by how it was presented to the public. I figured there was a very good chance GDP would rebound for at least a quarter - and the political spin would be “Biden saves America from the Putin recession in record time” or something.
None of those talking heads had a single clue that the “two declining quarters” definition was simply a useful shorthand and yet they all immediately hopped on the exact same script.
Edit: in case it wasn’t clear, I 100% agree that we need more accurate definitions. So much needless harm is being done when the response to edge cases falling outside the colloquial understanding of a term is to quietly change dictionary definitions instead of educating the population.
If your bar for solving a political problem is 'We must first make sure everyone speaks about it the way I want them to speak', you're never going to get there. In a union of ignorance and malice, it's very easy for thought leaders to deliberately misframe speech, as they are the ones who determine both what we are allowed to talk about, and how we are allowed to talk about it.
The issue is that what you've seen since the pandemic started has been basically insane macroeconomic statistics that defy historical correlations, so whereas the US GDP declined in Q1 and Q2 of this year, there weren't corresponding declines in other statistics (e.g., unemployment stayed low). If half of the economic indicators are signalling "recession" and the other half are signalling "rip-roaring growth", any definition that pigeon-holes the economy into one or the other is likely a bad definition.
The same doesn’t exist in Europe AFAICT. I don’t believe anybody is hoping that Putin would shut down the gas pipes for good so that their favorite politician could win an election next year.
Thinking the economy is not doing great is different than wanting the national economy to do poorly.
If you look at employment over the past 20 years [1], you'll see that Obama took office when the economy was in freefall and after about 9 months the economy turned around and started growing steadily until someone let COVID run wild in the US, at which point the economy fell off a cliff. But the right wing media isn't going to (and never would) say Obama handed Trump a very strong economy and Trump was the first president to oversee a net loss of jobs in over 80 years. The right wing media also won't mention that Trump was all in on making the money printer go brr so that his reelection didn't also have to overcome an explosion of poverty in addition to explosions in death and unemployment. But the right wing media isn't interested it accurately describing reality; it's goal is to secure power for right wing politicians, and to have a shot of doing that in a democracy, right wing media has to conceal the inconvenient facts that show Democrats are actually better stewards of the economy, produce lower rates of violent crime, and are consistently better at delivering improvements to the net and median quality of life of residents of the US.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/business/economy/inflatio...
Also, if you don't believe anyone in Europe is rooting for collapses you seem to be ignoring Short positions or how capitalism works. Everywhere in the world, someone benefits from the people in power failing/bad things happening. This isn't an exceptionally American trait.
>Most of the recessions identified by the Committee’s procedures consist of two or more quarters of declining real GDP, but declining real GDP is not the only indicator used. As an example, the Committee has identified the period from the first quarter in 1980 to the third quarter in 1982 as a recession, even though real GDP was growing in some quarters during that episode and that real GDP was higher at the end of the recession than at the beginning. As another example, the Committee did not declare a recession for 2001 or 2003, even though the data at the time appeared to show a decline in economic activity (though not for two quarters). Subsequent data revisions have erased these declines.
Those claiming a US media conspiracy to redefine the term "recession" have a political axe to grind, and nothing more. The NBER identifies recessions in the US, they have done it for a long time, and they will continue to do so.
[0] https://eabcn.org/dc/faq