They did not redefine it.
Brian Deese, 2008
"As Secretary Yellen said on Sunday, two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of a recession"
Brian Deese, 2022
Brian Deese, in 2022, was Joe Biden’s National Economic Council Director.
That's not redefining it? Are you redefining redefine?
> That's not redefining it?
No, someone getting the definition wrong and someone else getting it right is not a redefinition.
B) Many people define recessions as you said, as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Deese 2008 was one, apparently, and Deese 2022 was not.
C) The US commerce department started using the NBER to set recessions in the 1960s.
> A definition of a recession commonly used in the media is two consecutive quarters of a shrinking gross domestic product (GDP). In contrast, the NBER defines a recession as "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]
So I guess Deese redefined what Deese thought (as people sometimes do over 14 years) but neither the NBER, nor economists at large, did any redefinition.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/27/who-deci...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...
Something about two quarters consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth was the original definition, it happened, and they said recession means something else.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188185/percent-change-fr...
“They” haven’t changed any definitions, I don’t think there’s even a “they,” and there was not a recession by any definition of recession.
The fed tried hard to induce one because of wage growth and inflation, but failed to do so. Companies in tech specifically fired a ton of people in preparation, but that doesn’t make a recession - just bad business judgement. Tech leadership has never been super sharp to begin with.
If they don't say it's a recession, it isn't one.
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What is consistent is that the economists there declare recessions way too late in practice. I think they declared a recession dated in 2007 in the year 2009, when we were already recovering.
So what we have are a bunch of internet bloggers who try to call a recession before the experts. But all that happens in practice is that the bloggers call a recession every 3 months since 2010 hoping that they're correct today.
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If we are in a recession today, we will know for sure maybe next year. That's just how it works on this issue, and it's premature to call it any sooner.
Nope, that was never the official definition, that was a convenient approximate rule of thumb.