Politicians Proclaim Recession Officially Here

• Author: Jessica Williams
• Posted: 2024-04-24

One does not need to hold a degree in economics to understand that the United States is currently dealing with some economic issues. Something is amiss, as can be easily noticed by people out shopping. Gas is far cheaper than it was, meat is up to four times more expensive, and necessities like toilet paper, bread and eggs are entirely shopped out. These are certainly signs of something bad, and policymakers are now saying that the US is officially in a recession period.

Speaking about the US economy earlier Thursday, April 2, some politicians and other high-ranking officials were very candid about the situation facing the world’s largest economy. According to Neel Kashkari, the president of the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, “One thing we know from [America’s previous recession is] it took more than a decade to put the labor market back together.” He continued to say that he was really pleased by the actions taken by the federal government, but reiterated that recessions are not easy to bounce back from.

What pleased Kashkari was that the federal government has signed into action a $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, due to be rolled out April 3, in order for small businesses to be able to keep people on their payroll in times of economic decline.

The scary thing here is that in only the past two weeks, over 10 million Americans have entered the unemployment pool. This is an unprecedented turn of events for the American economy. These numbers were not that high even in the Great Depression. So this leads many people to fear the worst, and government does need to do whatever it can to help people in these tough times. It’s “shocking and disturbing,” according to Kashkari, who even noted that his wife is among those many Americans who outright lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Is it Really a Recession?

A recession is defined merely as a temporary economic downturn, so by any objective metric is it obvious that the United States is in a recission, along with much of the rest of the world. The real issue here, as implied by Kashkari and other economic experts, is that the mere idea of a “recession” could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby panicked people could usher in consequences that are far worse than what would occur organically.

To date, over 10 million people have lost their jobs since Covid-19 started to spread. Over 80% of all grocery and convenient stores are out of essentials like toilet paper and eggs, while hand sanitizer, disinfectant spray and alcohol are all sold out. Prices have climbed substantially on items like meats. These are all issues that are artificially inflated by how people act. For instance, once all the necessities were bought out, stores started trying to protect customers by raising prices. While it seems ironic, the idea is that if the items cost more, someone with money will not come in and buy everything on the shelves, depriving other people.

Depriving other people is one of the biggest issues any economy goes through during times of recession and depression. There’s always a group of people who wish to capitalize on the suffering of others. Case in point, a man in Kentucky went through hundreds of stores in two states, spending $18,000 on hand sanitizer and other antibacterial products. He then turned around on Amazon and attempted to sell bottles of hand sanitizer for $70 per bottle. The auction site eBay is currently experiencing a large swath of users who are advertising fake items for sale, like isopropyl alcohol, then taking the money and shutting down their accounts. These things add to the issues the nation faces during recession; they help to exacerbate the problems.

The Likelihood of Ongoing Issues

The truth, according to economic experts, is that we’re likely not to bounce back from recession until consumer confidence is restored, which means people need to stop trying to capitalize on the suffering, and people definitely need to stop panicking and buying every single item off of store shelves. Throughout all the world’s examples of pandemics, only when people actually come together do problems actually get better. Currently in America, far too many people are only concerned about themselves, a lot of which is a concern about profiting from misery.

What this leaves us all with is a big mess with a lot of different areas that need to be cleaned up before we’re going to bounce back from this current recession.