Paul Krugman: There Is No Recession and If There Is, It Doesn't Matter.
Also, The Economy Is Great and Any Thought to the Contrary Is Just Caused by a Biased Media Out to Get Biden.

It's sad when great minds slide into dementia.

It's also sad to see it happen to Paul Krugman.

New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman joined CNN's Brian Stelter on Sunday and asserted the U.S. was not in a recession and that the term did not matter.

"Are we in a recession and does the term matter?" Stelter asked.

Krugman responded, "No we aren't, and no it doesn't."

It doesn't matter if we're in a recession or not -- at least under a Democrat president, because there are more important leftwing priorities being satisfied.

"None of the usual criteria that real experts use says we're in a recession right now. And what does it matter? You know, the state of the economy is what it is. Jobs are abundant although maybe the job market is weakening. Inflation is high, although maybe inflation is coming down. What does it matter whether you use the 'r' world or not?" he said.

Krugman said the debate around defining a recession was "vitriolic."

"I've never seen anything as bad as this, the determination of a lot of people to say it's a recession is above and beyond anything I've ever seen," Krugman said, adding that partisanship was driving the debate.

The New York Times columnist suggested people "want" the "Biden recession." "Never mind the fact that you know, it in fact is not a recession in any technical sense," he continued.

Two straight quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth has typically been the technical definition of a recession.

...

"There's been a kind of negativity bias in coverage. The press should be giving people -- people have their own personal experience. And if you ask people how are you doing, they're pretty upbeat," Krugman claimed, adding that some will complain about gas prices. "If you ask people how is your financial situation, it's pretty favorable. If you ask them how is the economy, oh, it's terrible. That's a media failing. Somehow we're failing to convey the realities of what's going on to people."

The sheeple aren't believing our lies. We have to shout our lies louder so the sheeple will believe.

Note that Paul Krugman was just pressured by the New York Times Editorial Board to confess an error he'd made -- all editorialists were told to do this -- and he admitted he was wrong to repeatedly deny that inflation was a threat.

Although he spent half of his column arguing why the people who were right about inflation were really wrong because their logic was all wrong and his was perfect and flawless. Even though, you know, they got it right and he got it wrong.

"I was wrong but for the right reasons, and you were right but for the wrong reasons!"

F*ck you, you malignant meglomaniacal dwarf.

Days after admitting (begrudgingly) his last gigantic error, he announced the roll-out of his New Gigantic Error:

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman expressed confidence that there "won't be" a recession just days after he offered a mea culpa for wrongly dismissing inflation concerns.

In his piece Tuesday attempting to explain what a recession is, Krugman began by acknowledging "there's a pretty good chance" that data set to be released on Thursday will show the GDP had shrunk for two consecutive quarters, which has long been an indicator of a recession.

Well, Krugman took a preemptive swipe at the "breathless commentary" that will erupt declaring a recession, telling readers "we won't be."

"That's not how recessions are defined; more important, it's not how they should be defined," Krugman wrote. "It's possible that the people who actually decide whether we're in a recession... will eventually declare that a recession began in the United States in the first half of this year, although that's unlikely given other economic data."

The Nobel Prize-winning economist went on to say it would be "foolish" to declare a recession solely based on Thursday's findings despite the extremely high correlation with multiple consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

"And what difference would a recession call make, anyway?" Krugman wondered. "What should matter is the state of the economy -- which is complicated -- not the particular word we use to describe it."

Ah. It's "complicated" under Democrat presidents.

Krugman has not thought it was a "complicated" to judge an economy as bad or recessionary under Republicans. He's a hyperpartisan lunatic, not an economist.

There is a hundred year precedent for defining two quarters of negative growth a recession, but we're now in Year Zero so YOLO!

The latest economic doublespeak from the Biden administration is a stern warning to not believe your lying eyes. President Joe Biden, who said Thursday, "That doesn't sound like recession to me," seems to want us to believe the economy is in far better shape than the stark reality right in front of our faces.

But it's hard to ignore the latest gross domestic product data from the Department of Commerce, which shows the economy contracted in both the first and second quarters of this year, indicating that the nation is in recession.

This comes as no surprise to millions of American families who have been struggling just to buy groceries and gasoline. Real incomes--incomes adjusted for inflation--have steadily declined under the Biden administration over 6%. Meanwhile, monthly savings are down 75% and household debt has increased by $1.3 trillion.

All the while, the White House and loyal Biden sycophants throughout the government have tried to redefine the word "recession" in such a way that the newspeak version of the word coincidentally excludes the current economic contraction. The verbal gymnastics it is taking to do so would make George Orwell's Ministry of Truth quite proud.

This is despite a 100-year precedent that every time the economy has contracted for two consecutive quarters, those occurrences have all been considered recessions. In the past 75 years, whenever inflation has been above 4% and unemployment below 4%, a recession has followed within the next two years.

There is N O T H I N G - u h Paul Krugman claims that is not completely determined by his totalizing political rage:

It's time to start deplatforming these filthy Russian-Propaganda-Spewing Recession Deniars.

Glad to see he's looking fit and vigorous.

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

Watching them so brazenly re-define how they have always used "recession," and then Paul Krugman adding it doesn't matter if we're in one or not (it doesn't matter for him), all to protect the Biden WH, is a new level of audacity no matter how low your opinion of them already is.

This is worth the watch: These redefinitions are not designed to persuade or even to be believed by those pushing them, but are simply shibboleths and quickie Loyalty Oaths to The Regime.

Similar observation from Victoria Taft: "It has been overt and in-your-face. Biden’s people attempted to re-frame ideas and concepts and change the norms of what has been true over time. It's the same thing the Left has done with the definition of woman, marriage, parents, and recession."

That link via Stephen Green at Instapundit.

From Kyle Mann of the Babylon Bee:

posted by Ace at 02:19 PM

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