Tag Archives: recession

On July 21, the Alternative Federal Budget Recovery Plan was released. The document aims to provide public policy direction to Canada’s federal government, in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. I was author of the Recovery Plan’s chapter on affordable housing and homelessness, which can be accessed here. Nick Falvo is a Calgary-based research consultant with a PhD in Public Policy. He has academic affiliation at both Carleton University and Case Western Reserve...

"Britain nearly went bust in March, says Bank of England", reads a headline in the Guardian. In similar vein, the Telegraph's Business section reports "UK finances were close to collapse, says Governor":Eh, what? The Governor of the Bank of England says the UK nearly turned into Venezuela? Well, that's what the Telegraph seems to think: The Bank of England was forced to save the Government from potential financial collapse as markets seized up at the height of the coronavirus crisis,...

"Britain nearly went bust in March, says Bank of England", reads a headline in the Guardian. In similar vein, the Telegraph's Business section reports "UK finances were close to collapse, says Governor":Eh, what? The Governor of the Bank of England says the UK nearly turned into Venezuela? Well, that's what the Telegraph seems to think: The Bank of England was forced to save the Government from potential financial collapse as markets seized up at the height of the coronavirus crisis,...

Is the U.S. in recession? If so, when did the recession start, and what caused it? The usual economic definition of "recession" is two successive quarters of negative GDP growth. But in Q1 2020, growth was positive, though it was apparently slowing sharply (more on this shortly):So using the standard economic definition, the U.S. is not yet in recession.But according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER), the U.S. entered recession in...

Is the U.S. in recession? If so, when did the recession start, and what caused it? The usual economic definition of "recession" is two successive quarters of negative GDP growth. But in Q1 2020, growth was positive, though it was apparently slowing sharply (more on this shortly):So using the standard economic definition, the U.S. is not yet in recession.But according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER), the U.S. entered recession in...

The video of my talk can be seen here.

First GDP numbers of the Great Shutdown were out yesterday. As it can be seen in the graph, GDP shrunk by about 4.8%. The data reflects only the first weeks of the stay at home lockdown of the economy in March, as the BEA report points out. Numbers will get considerably worse. You must add to this the increase in unemployment insurance claims, which since the crisis started has gone up by more than 26 million, as reported by the Labor Department. Note that the unemployment rate is still...

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By Ahmad Borazan, Fresno State (Guest blogger)Economic commentators are struggling to find a historic precedent to the current COVID-19 caused economic crisis and the possible path of recovery. Majority of economic downturns are dominantly an aggregate demand driven phenomenon. But with the current crisis there is an imposed constriction in both supply and demand sides of the economy. Looking at the aggregate supply and demand forced contraction there is a compelling analogy between the...

[embedded content] I appear between minutes 39 and 59 approximately. Rick's show is always worth listening to.