Some denials are more worrying than their absence. A company insisting that its director will be vindicated by the forensic auditors is unlikely to succeed in calming investors; a sports team insisting it has total confidence in its coach is likely to receive a flurry of speculative applications; and a president insisting that ‘we’re not gonna be in a recession in my view’ is unlikely to do consumer confidence a great deal of good.
The major difference here is that the White House has the advantage of being able to mark its own homework. No matter what today’s GDP data shows, Biden’s team will be able to claim the US is not in recession by the cunning mechanism of simply choosing a different definition. Output’s fallen for two quarters in a row? Actually, we think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that; you need to take a holistic view of the economy.
You only need to play word games if things are going badly
You are probably familiar with the first definition.
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