As millions lose jobs, Fed policymakers say recession is here

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The U.S. recession is here. How long it will last will depend on the course of a viral pandemic that could still kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and has most of the country under lockdowns aimed at slowing the infection's spread.

But how quickly the world's biggest economy will recover will depend on how much aid the government gives it and how effectively aid can be used to stem what are already millions of job losses, Fed officials said Thursday.

"One thing we know from 2008, when you had millions and millions and millions of Americans losing their jobs, it took more than a decade to put the labor market back together," Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said in a webcast town-hall event. "I'm really pleased that a lot of the action by the federal government and the state governments has been focused on trying to keep workers in their jobs."

Kashkari was referring to the new $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, to be rolled out Friday to provide small businesses with grants to keep their workers on the payroll.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/as-millions-lose-jobs-fed-policymakers-say-recession-is-here/ar-BB125t5D?li=BBnb7Kz

[blueinredohio]

1. A recession? No shit.

[Igel]

2. But it's not a meaningful term.

With "recession" comes all sorts of economic information.

This is weird, not a downturn based on economic factors but a diktat, the government basically compelling a cessation of economic activity. It's one thing for a company to go belly up because it's inefficient, can't be run profitably, has built up too much debt. It's a different kind of thing that it's shut down and kept shut so long that the owners can't keep it functional or it's in such disarray afterwards that it can't get started before it's bankrupt.

The closest I've seen is some totalitarian countries.

What's left when it's over won't be the usual results of a recession. Recessions often have a way of liquidating marginal or less productive companies. That's not the case here.