America is officially in our longest economic expansion in history, and in 2019, experts began to think they’ve called the top.
“Recession or slowdown?” asked one New York Times column, noting that the economy “seems to be cooling off.” Economics journalist Anthony Rowley told us “The world following a 2019 recession is likely to be more polarised, or even bifurcated, where the US and China, as the two biggest growth poles, seek to write their separate economic narratives.” Vox told us that “everybody’s woried” about a recession again in 2019, but hedged their bets by saying its “perhaps” coming.
Admittedly, if we did indeed enter a recession, it would be amusing to watch all the pundits crediting Trump’s superb economy to Barack Obama to suddenly point the finger at Trump. But obviously, that didn’t happen, as the economy showed continued strength closing out the year, with job growth rising faster than expected even at what is now effectively full employment.
And with that, yet another economic record has been set by Trump.
According to Markets Insider:
In every decade since the period immediately before the Civil War, the US economy could be relied on to do one thing: tumble into a recession.
The last one stretched from December 2007 until June 2009, unleashing 18 months of massive job losses and historic rates of home foreclosures.
But the American economy is likely to defy that trend for the first time in nearly 170 years as it enters the 2020s. The 2010s would be first time a decade has come and gone without the nation falling into recession, which is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of contracting gross domestic product.
It also must be kept in mind that all recessions are not equal, and our next recession will be nothing like the last one we had, where unemployment soared from 6% to 10%. A recession is simply just two consecutive quarters where GDP contracts, regardless of the size of the contraction. Even if unemployment were to double overnight, it would “only” be at 7%, or around the average unemployment rate in Europe.
