“All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers,” George Orwell wrote in “1984.”
On Thursday, the federal government is expected to release statistics revealing that the economy contracted in the second quarter. Since this will be the second quarter in a row that the economy shrank, that fits the established definition of a recession.
So true to Orwell, Team Biden is going to change the meaning of words.
Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors launched a preemptive strike against bad news with a blog post on the theme: “What is a recession?” Despite decades of top economists concurring on a definition, Biden’s appointees treat the topic like an arcane metaphysical dispute that requires a “holistic look at the data.”
Instead of admitting the economy is shrinking, Team Biden touts a test indicating that a recession is not underway unless “the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate rises by at least half a percentage point (50 basis points) relative to its lowest point in the previous 12 months.”