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Comment by slowwwclap | Hacker News Reader

US has already had two quarters of negative GDP growth. https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product

Bloomberg is 100% right.

It's a common misconception because of crappy media that that alone is how to determine a recession. There was a good Planer Money on it a month or so ago. Either way the goal right now IS a recession. That's why interest rates are up but despite this we keep buying shit we don't need.

Why do people keep posting this?

It's one of the textbook definitions of a recession from a first year college economics course. That is, it's a standard definition of a recession.

For example, to quote the IMF:

"Most commentators and analysts use, as a practical definition of recession, two consecutive quarters of decline in a country’s real (inflation adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP)—the value of all goods and services a country produces (see “Back to Basics,” F&D, December 2008). Although this definition is a useful rule of thumb, it has drawbacks." (https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2009/03/pdf/basic...)

David Sacks points this issue out rather well.

Because the people who don't like this textbook definition being used when it's inconvenient, haven't proposed a better definition. What definition would you use to describe a recession?

Because its the standard and long-since-accepted definition. That it makes the ruling party look bad is immaterial.

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