Summary
U.S. stocks tumbled Thursday as market volatility continued after Trump’s abrupt 90-day tariff pause and raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%.
On CNN, former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called Trump’s economic policies the “worst self-inflicted wound” an administration had ever imposed on a “well-functioning economy.”
The Dow dropped 2.5%, Nasdaq 4%, and S&P 500 3.4%. Trump tried to defend the move as strategic leverage.
Critics condemned the chaos and raised insider trading concerns after Trump told subscribers it was a “great time to buy.”
This is a question for anyone:
I can’t find a good definition of a fiscal recession. I understand that it involves “multiple months of downward trends” on things like GDP.
Exactly how long does the downturn have to last before they declare that it is officially a period of recession? Is it really just 2 months or more?
It’s usually two quarters. By the time we are officially in recession we have been for half a year.
Also, it’s not two quarters of the stock market being down, but GDP. What’s being talked about in this article is the stock market. I mean, yeah, they’re linked, but the stock market is going to be considerably more-volatile and reflects investor beliefs about future economic activity. After some bouncing around, the S&P 500 is down something like 10% as of today since the beginning of the month. US GDP has not dropped 10% in the past week-and-a-half.
EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okun's_law
If we’d had the GDP fall off by 10% in the past week and a half, we’d expect something like one in twenty Americans to have lost their jobs in the past week and a half.
Yeah, I don’t think the GDP is a great defining factor of economic emergency, in that words like “recession” have to be declared before the country treats the problem seriously. Assuming that growth is going to happen forever in a finite world is naive. And there are serious problems in the economy happening despite the GDP, like increasing poverty and lack of education or healthcare.
So like, my frustration is that “recession” has to be said before the government freaks out and attempts to fix things, but things are already really bad in ways that matter far more.