This could be the recession we did not have to have
Federal and state governments have chosen policies which allowed the virus to spread - and which clash oddly with their usual fixations on public security.
Last month, the US National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee formally determined that the US recession that began in March 2020 ended just a month later – making it the shortest of the 35 recessions that the US has experienced since 1854.
This determination underscores the fact that, at least in the US, it has never been a necessary or sufficient condition for identifying a recession that there be two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth in real GDP.
Loading...
Saul Eslake is former chief economist of ANZ Bank and of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Australia, and is now principal of Corinna Economic Advisory based in Hobart.
