There is a multitude of remedies for digging an economy out of a recession or avoiding an economic recession altogether. There tends to be, however, a common thread amongst each of these methods. Since conditions that drive a recession typically emerge over long periods of time, it generally takes a comparable amount of time for our government officials and the Federal Reserve to correct our collective course.
If our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is lagging due to certain contributors, for instance, an injection of cash into the economy via government spending can jump-start our economy and push GDP growth back to the positive side of the ledger. Similarly, tax cuts can give an economy a shot in the arm as well. But, if inflation is problematic like it is now, however, increased spending usually exacerbates the problem, in which case interest rates must be increased. This approach can be used while still avoiding a recession, but it gets tricky.
But thanks to the Biden Administration there is a new tactic to both avoid sinking into a recession and digging ourselves out of one once we’re in it, and it’s one whose efficacy is immediately evident. And the solution is so simple, it was there all along, and we non-Democrats were all just morons for not recognizing the fix from the beginning. All we must do to avoid or emerge from a recession is this: Simply change the definition of what it means to be in a recession. Boom, problem solved!
According to the Washington Post:
“The Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday is set to release the second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers. And if they’re negative, that will mark two consecutive quarters in which the economy has contracted — something that is generally understood to mean a recession.
How real and politically sensitive is that possibility? Real enough that the Biden administration is seeking to preempt it. Late last week, the White House issued a document stating that two straight quarters of negative GDP ‘is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.’ Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen on Sunday went so far as to say she would be ‘amazed’ if the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) — which determines whether we are officially in a recession — were to declare that. She also stated flatly that we’re not in a recession.”
Got that? Secretary Yellen would be “amazed” if it turns out our economy is in a recession, and how can we blame her? If the same administration that has caused a recession, a situation that would be extremely politically costly, can arbitrarily manipulate the very definition of what it means to be in one, then she would be correct to be amazed.
We’re not in a recession because we said so. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about the economy Joe and Jane Taxpayer, everything is going just great, and you should just go back to what you were doing, stop complaining so much, and vote for Democrats in November. Now leave us alone.
It’s government gaslighting of the highest order, and our mainstream media – aka, the second branch of the Democratic Party’s Communications Department – is fully on board, willing to nod along to the Biden Administration narrative and scold anyone who disagrees. Consider this additional comment from Ms. Yellen.
“’Even if that [GDP] number is negative, we are not in a recession now,’ Yellen said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ ‘And I would, you know, warn that we should be not characterizing that as a recession.’”
Consider yourself warned.
For those of us who bothered to study Macroeconomics 101 in school, we needn’t have bothered. In our first week of the class, we learned that two successive quarters of negative GDP growth meant we were in a recession. But that’s not true, don’t you know. In fact, if you got that question wrong on an exam, we suggest you contact that professor and ask for your grade to be changed. It turns out that, especially in an election year, the definition of a “recession” is whatever the hell Joe Biden and Janet Yellen say it is. That was the proper answer to that question and one that’s pretty damned easy to remember.
PF Whalen
P.F. Whalen is a conservative author at TheBlueStateConservative.com. His work has appeared in multiple publications, including Human Events, the Western Journal, and American Thinker. Follow him on GETTR; he does not do Facebook and Twitter.
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