This Is Not a Recession. It's an Ice Age.

[marmar]

(The Atlantic) We can’t say we’re in a recession yet, at least not formally. A committee decides these things—no, really. The government generally adopts the view that a contraction is not a recession unless economic activity has declined over two quarters. But we’re in a recession and everyone knows it. And what we’re experiencing is so much more than that: a black swan, a financial war, a plague. Maybe things feel normal where you are. Maybe things do not feel normal. Things are not normal. For weeks or months, we won’t know how much GDP has slowed down and how many people have been forced out of work. Government statistics take a while to generate. They look backwards, the latest numbers still depicting a hot economy near full employment. To quantify the present reality, we have to rely on anecdotes from businesses, surveys of workers, shreds of private data, and a few state numbers. They show an economy not in a downturn or a contraction or a soft patch, not experiencing losses or selling off or correcting. They show evaporation, disappearance on what feels like a religious scale. ....... (more)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/quantifying-coming-recession/608443/

[Cirque du So-What]

1. There's a word I expect will get used more frequently

Deflation.

The media still avoid saying it in an almost superstitious way. Soon, there will be no avoiding it.

[projectiboga]

2. Deflation is the inverse of inflation

In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0%. Inflation reduces the value of currency over time, but sudden deflation increases it. This allows more goods and services to be bought than before with the same amount of currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation

We are going to have stagflation, where the economy is shrinking but the extra money paid out to people will be chasing reduced production, so prices are going to increase, while production will be dipping.