Recession? Headlines in Search of a Story

Recent breathless headlines of impending recession exposed the “experts” more than the economy. In attempting to see over the economic horizon, they appeared more to be seeking to see past this administration. The economy remains sound, even as attempts to discredit become less so.

On August 19, the Washington Post’s first sentence summed up its one-dimensional angle on the National Association for Business Economics’ August survey: “Most economists believe the United States will tip into recession by 2021, a new survey shows, despite White House insistence the economy is sound.” So it went, with most establishment news outlets bent on finding the gray cloud around today’s current sterling economy.

Negative news sells. Perhaps it has always been thus, though it certainly seems most prevalent when the news is adverse to this administration.

Interestingly, the latest NABE survey showed something else — an improvement over the previous survey — if the time had been taken to read it. As the survey stated in its section on the economy, “Compared with results in the February 2019 survey, respondents, on balance, expect the next U.S. recession to occur later.” In other words, the survey shows an improved outlook regarding recession.

Respondents predicting a recession this year dropped from 10 percent to 2 percent. Those anticipating one next year also dropped, from 42 percent to 38 percent. Presuming these more optimistic respondents must put their predictions somewhere, they moved them to 2021, causing this later estimation to rise from 25 percent to 34 percent. Finally, those predicting the next recession would be even later moved up from 11 percent to 14 percent.