Day: August 10, 2019

A bicycle and a brick wall: collision imminent, collateral damage uncertain.

benfell

Brexit

There is a new blog entry entitled, “A bicycle on a steep downward slope towards a brick wall.”

Christopher Hope and Harry Yorke, “Buckingham Palace and Downing Street plan to keep the Queen out of looming constitutional crisis over Brexit,” Telegraph, August 9, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/09/buckingham-palace-downing-street-plan-keep-queen-looming-constitutional/

Guns

There is another new blog post entitled, “They’re taking our guns away!”

Bob Bauder, “Pittsburgh mayor Peduto, state lawmakers call for vote on Pa. gun bills,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 9, 2019, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/peduto-state-lawmakers-call-for-vote-on-gun-bills/

Recession

At Reuters, John Kemp thinks we are probably already in a recession.[1] The trick to this is that he might be right but it will be a while before we know because the statistics that are used to call a recession are retrospective. It took nearly a year in the U.S. for the National Bureau of Economic Research to declare the 2008-2009 recession[2] that had already by that time long been apparent, and over a year to declare its end.[3] To my knowledge, there’s no reason such a declaration should be any more timely this time.

Kemp blames the trade war,[4] but really, there’s no reason it has to be only one thing and all those other factors I listed yesterday remain in play.[5]

John Kemp, “Global economy is probably in recession,” Reuters, August 7, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-economy-kemp/column-global-economy-is-probably-in-recession-idUKKCN1UX1OF

  1. [1]John Kemp, “Global economy is probably in recession,” Reuters, August 7, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-economy-kemp/column-global-economy-is-probably-in-recession-idUKKCN1UX1OF↩
  2. [2]Business Cycle Dating Committee, December 11, 2008, “http://www.nber.org/cycles/dec2008.html” target=”_blank”>http://www.nber.org/cycles/dec2008.html↩
  3. [3]Business Cycle Dating Committee, September 20, 2010, http://www.nber.org/cycles/sept2010.html↩
  4. [4]John Kemp, “Global economy is probably in recession,” Reuters, August 7, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-economy-kemp/column-global-economy-is-probably-in-recession-idUKKCN1UX1OF↩
  5. [5]The factors I listed include a tech bubble, Donald Trump’s trade war against China, Brexit, a housing bubble (yes, again, but apparently not so much in the U.S.), an idea that what has been going up for so long must surely come down (we are unlikely to have eliminated the “economic cycle”), and that the Federal Reserve has limited options to deal with a downturn in David Benfell, “Forsaken,” Irregular Bullshit, August 9, 2019, https://disunitedstates.com/2019/08/09/forsaken/↩