The Washington Post reports that the National Bureau of Economic Research said yesterday that the US economy officially entered recession last February, which ended a 128-month economic expansion.
That more than 10-year expansion was the longest on record.
The Post notes that "the coronavirus outbreak began in China in December and spread to the U.S. in January, although it wasn’t until mid-March that the WHO declared it a global pandemic and President Trump declared it a national emergency.
"The World Bank estimates that global gross domestic product will shrink 5.2 percent in 2020 as the pandemic continues to disrupt business, travel and manufacturing around the world."
- KC's View:
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Recession always has been a matter of "when," not "if."
What we didn't know was that we'd be facing recession as the same time as the world grapples with a pandemic, and the country deals with considerable social unrest.
They all seem to be intertwined … I'm no expert, but it seems to me that you can't really get out of recession in any meaningful way without dealing with the pandemic, and at the same time addressing the social/cultural/racial issues that hold so many people back.
Nothing happens in a vacuum.
