{"id":62536,"date":"2022-04-26T08:01:51","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T13:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62536"},"modified":"2022-04-26T08:01:51","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T13:01:51","slug":"walking-backward-into-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62536","title":{"rendered":"Walking backward into the storm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Walking backward into the storm<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Are we in a recession?\u00a0 It is an interesting question because nobody\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0know for sure.\u00a0 A recession is defined as two successive quarters of negative growth.\u00a0 Okay, but how do we know if, in the quarter we are in, the economy is shrinking?\u00a0 Again, we\u00a0cannot<\/em>\u00a0know this.\u00a0 This is because the latest data we have is for February 2022\u2026 and it showed an unexpected fall in growth to just 0.1 percent.\u00a0 In the event that growth turned sufficiently negative in March 2022, then the first quarter of 2022 as a whole might have been negative.\u00a0 And in the event that this negative trend continued through April and on through May and June 2022, then we would indeed be in a recession\u2026 but we will only know for sure when the data is published in August.<\/p>\n

It is on this kind of uncertainty that economic policy is set.\u00a0 On top of the slowdown in growth \u2013 which may have improved or worsened, but nobody knows yet \u2013 comes\u00a0data for March<\/a>\u00a0showing a dramatic fall in retail spending, largely resulting from rising food and fuel prices.\u00a0 Is this because households and businesses can no longer\u00a0afford<\/em>\u00a0to buy, or are they reining in their spending in anticipation of higher prices in future?\u00a0 Again, we do not know.\u00a0 Certainly, food and energy retailers have warned that prices will have to rise in future.\u00a0 At the same time, households and businesses face higher local and national taxes and utility bills.\u00a0 And so, falling sales is likely a combination of both prices that have already risen\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0the expectation of price rises to come.<\/p>\n

Crucially though, the lens through which economic policy makers are viewing the economic clouds gathering on the horizon is a financial lens which looks back fondly on the sunlit uplands of the pre-2008 years as some kind of normal…<\/p>\n

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

Walking backward into the storm Are we in a recession?\u00a0 It is an interesting question because nobody\u00a0can\u00a0know for sure.\u00a0 A recession is defined as two successive quarters of negative growth.\u00a0 Okay, but how do we know if, in the quarter we are in, the economy is shrinking?\u00a0 Again, we\u00a0cannot\u00a0know this.\u00a0 This is because the latest […]<\/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":[13351,1264,31962,31360],"class_list":["post-62536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-price-inflation","tag-recession","tag-the-consciouness-of-sheep","tag-tim-watkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62536","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=62536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62537,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62536\/revisions\/62537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}