How the Recession Doomers Got the U.S. Economy So Wrong
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In 2022, it was a matter of conventional and nearly universal wisdom that the 2023 economy would be a nightmare.
Last October, a Bloomberg economic model said that the odds of a U.S. recession this year were 100 percent. No, not 99.99 percent, as in the odds that you’ll avoid being struck by lightning this evening. One hundred percent, as in the odds that you’ll avoid falling into a time-bending wormhole that spits you out in 17th-century Versailles at a dinner table with Louis XIV.
Bloomberg’s bot wasn’t unique in its gloom, either. The Federal Reserve itself hundreds of thousands of job losses by this December. In a survey last year, meaning the level of expert pessimism was greater than before the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, the brutal recession of the early 1980s, and the Great Recession of 2008. Economic glumness spread to the C-suite. Last year, a KPMG found that nine in 10 chief executives anticipated a recession in 2023. Republicans eagerly piled on, proactively the White House for a “Cruel Biden Recession” that all the experts seemingly claimed was inevitable.
