{"id":56253,"date":"2020-12-31T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-31T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56253"},"modified":"2020-12-31T08:01:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T13:01:54","slug":"the-year-ahead-u-s-faces-uncertain-economic-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56253","title":{"rendered":"The Year Ahead: U.S. Faces Uncertain Economic Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Year Ahead: U.S. Faces Uncertain Economic Future<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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\"The<\/p>\n

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<\/a>You\u2019re standing in the back yard, filling up a wading pool for the kids with a garden hose. If you turn the hose off, the pool stops filling. Allow enough time, and the sun evaporates the water. Over the course of the summer, the water slowly dries up, leaving you with an empty pool and unhappy children \u2013 unless you turn the hose back on.<\/p>\n

Starting in late February, governors across the U.S.\u00a0turned off<\/a>\u00a0(or severely restricted) their economies to try and mitigate the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

They first\u00a0felt<\/a>\u00a0the consequences in March, and the negative ripple effects are likely to continue well\u00a0into<\/a>\u00a02021. The virus is\u00a0still<\/a>\u00a0circulating at high levels despite 10 months of lockdowns and travel restrictions (some of which are\u00a0still in place<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As we enter 2021, the deeper economic impacts are starting to become increasingly apparent. Even the more optimistic economic forecasts don\u2019t look that great.<\/p>\n

2021: Misplaced Optimism?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the bar for economic improvement is just \u201cdo better than 2020,\u201d it isn\u2019t hard to beat expectations. \u201cWe see really strong growth potentially starting in the second quarter,\u201d\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0Barclays economist Jonathan Millar. \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty strong year.\u201d<\/p>\n

That optimism seems misplaced once you factor in the\u00a0rest of this outlook<\/a>:<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean the economy will be back to normal. The pandemic is leaving a legacy of\u00a0millions of jobless Americans<\/strong>\u00a0and thousands of shuttered businesses that will\u00a0take years to reverse.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According\u00a0to<\/a>\u00a0Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, we\u2019re lucky because 2021\u2019s predicted unemployment rate fell from 5.5% to a mere 5%. That\u2019s not much better than the current unemployment rate of 6.7%, and considerably worse than the pre-pandemic 3.8% unemployed in January 2020.<\/p>\n

While that\u2019s good news, it won\u2019t offer much comfort to the millions of people who have already been out of work for much of 2020.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Year Ahead: U.S. Faces Uncertain Economic Future You\u2019re standing in the back yard, filling up a wading pool for the kids with a garden hose. If you turn the hose off, the pool stops filling. Allow enough time, and the sun evaporates the water. Over the course of the summer, the water slowly dries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18769,303,607,827,3650],"class_list":["post-56253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-birch-gold-group","tag-fed","tag-pandemic","tag-united-states","tag-us-federal-reserve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56255,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56253\/revisions\/56255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}