Reader Bruce Hall comments on this post showing the implications of a short horizon probit model of recession likelihood.
Perhaps I didn’t remember correctly, but during the Biden Administration when there were ongoing discussions about whether or not there had been a recession or there was a recession on the way, you had made an observation that it seemed some people were cheering on a recession. My comments was that it seemed some people were doing that now. It wasn’t pointed at you. Sorry if it seemed that way.
This picture summarizes one reason why I didn’t think a recession was imminent in 2022:
Figure 1: U.Michigan economic sentiment (blue, left scale), 1yr-Fed funds spread, % (brown, right scale). NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Conjectured 2022H1 recession dates shaded light green. Source: U.Michigan, Treasury, Fed, NBER, and author’s calculations.
For the sight impaired, the 1yr-Fed funds spread (highlighted by Miller (2019) as the highest AUROC spread at 1-2 months horizon) was strongly positive, while the March 2025 spread is negative. While the sentiment indicator is higher now than in 2022, but not statistically significantly so (it’s about half a standard deviation difference).
Moreover, in addition to employment growing strongly through 2022H1 (see Figure 1 of this post), services consumption (which should be the variable most strongly determined by the Hall-permanent income hypothesis view) was also growing strongly. That’s quite different than in 2025M02.
Figure 2: Services consumption relative to 2024M12 (blue), and relative to 2021M12 (tan). Source: BEA, and author’s calculations.
A note on Brucie’s pattern of comments… No, not on his dishonesty nor his refusal to address his own factual mis-statrments. What I want to point out here is his timing.
Brucie comes and goes in comments. Lately, Brucie has been very active. Why might that be? Well lately, the rapist-in-chief’s approval rating has fallen sharply. And all of Brucie’s comments tend to distract from or excuse the failures of the rapist-in-chief. So maybe Brucie’s goal is to disrupt any discussion of how bad the rapists policies truly are.
Here are some data from Gallup on job approval ratings for presidents:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx
What you’ll find there is that, not only is the rapist’s approval rating falling, but it is the lowest of any U.S. President at this point in his presidency since records have been kept – that’s back to Eisenhower.
So Brucie shows up, doing anything he can to lead us away from discussing the rapist’s policies, anything he can to give the impression that whatever is wrong isn’t so bad or is the fault of Democrats.
Brucie may simply be aping the behavior he sees on faux news, unaware of the illegitimacy of the faux rhetorical style. Alternatively, he’s aping the behavior he sees on faux news, fully aware of the dishonesty of that behavior.
Brucie has accused me, and others who have challenged his trickery, of having nothing of substance to offer, essentially claiming that we are like him. That’s simply not true. Big surprise, right?
I don’t shy away from facts. I’m tiresome in relating facts; ask anyone who reads coments here. Brucie regularly distorts facts and tries to distract us from facts.
I regularly criticized Biden for giving weapons and diplomatic support to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it’s ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. I regularly complained that Democrats did too little about climate change and industrial concentration, until Biden came along. Brucie only ever supports the rapist-in-chief, mostly by sly insinuation, but also directly. Brucie is purely partisan. I care about policy.
I can imagine no life worse than one spent the way Brucie is spending his. My happiest thought so far today is that I am nothing like Brucie.
Trump is trying to normalize another breach of the Constitution:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna198752
‘President Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of seeking a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with NBC News that there were methods for doing so and clarifying that he was “not joking.”’
Just a reminder:
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…”
22nd Amendment to the Constitution
Trump won in 2016?
NYT Pitchbot: “My focus group broadly agreed that Trump seeking a third term would spur a Constitutional crisis. But they also felt that in a Constitutional crisis, America would benefit from a strong leader like Trump.”
The Atlantic has picked up the IRS report estimating that staff and budget cuts will increase the deficit by half a trillion dollars per year:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/doge-deficit-trump-elon/682227/
Other news outlets are citing the article in The Atlantic, so word will spread:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/doge-cuts-increase-us-deficit-report-b2723835.html
The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget put the 10-year deficit cost of the felon-in-chief’s budget proposals at $7.75 trillion (central estimate). If IRS cuts add half a trillion a year, then make that $13.75 trillion, an average of $1.375 trillion per year. Only once in the entire history of the country has the deficit been that large, in the final year of the felon’s first term. For that matter, only twice has the deficit been as large as $775 billion.
So let’s not have any of this “Tut, tut. Taxpayers will be taxpayers” dismissal of what the felon intend to do to the budget. It’s a disaster.