So much for the claims that lockdowns would tank the economy for a long period of time... It’s official: The Covid recession lasted just two months, the shortest in U.S. history https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/19/its...st-two-months-the-shortest-in-us-history.html The Covid-19 recession ended in April 2020, the National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday. That makes the two-month downturn the shortest in U.S. history. The NBER is recognized as the official arbiter of when recessions end and begin. The Covid-19 recession is in the books as one of the deepest — but also the shortest — in U.S. history, the official documenter of economic cycles said Monday. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the contraction lasted just two months, from February 2020 to the following April. Though the drop featured a staggering 31.4% GDP plunge in the second quarter of the pandemic-scarred year, it also saw a massive snapback the following period, with previously unheard of policy stimulus boosting output by 33.4%. “In determining that a trough occurred in April 2020, the committee did not conclude that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity,” the NBER said in a news release. “The committee decided that any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession associated with the February 2020 peak. The basis for this decision was the length and strength of the recovery to date.” The pandemic recession was unique in a number of ways, not least how fast the contraction happened and how ferocious the recovery was. Conventionally, a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, which this recession met after the first quarter in 2020 fell 5%. But the NBER noted that in normal times, a recession lasts “more than a few months.” “However, in deciding whether to identify a recession, the committee weighs the depth of the contraction, its duration, and whether economic activity declined broadly across the economy (the diffusion of the downturn),” the release said. “The recent downturn had different characteristics and dynamics than prior recessions. Nonetheless, the committee concluded that the unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy, warranted the designation of this episode as a recession, even though the downturn was briefer than earlier contractions,” the statement added. In any event, the Covid recession is easily the briefest in history, with the January-to-July 1980 pullback the next in line at six months. The longest ever ran from October 1873 to March 1879, a duration of 65 months. The decision in this case that the recession ended more than a year ago, however, was not a surprise. Many economists had long ago pronounced the decline over, with annualized GDP rising 4.3% and 6.4% in the past two quarters and on track to jump 7.5% in the second quarter of 2021, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve. The NBER said it based its ruling as well on trends on both GDP and gross domestic income. Most economic indicators have returned to pre-Covid levels, though employment, arguably the most important one, has lagged. There are still 7.1 million fewer Americans at work now than they were in February 2020, before the pandemic began.
All a part of the plan to keep wealth isolated in the hands of the 0.01%. It was also the single largest wealth transfer in history for poor to rich thanks to lockdowns only allowing mega corps to stay open, crushed the middle class business owner, and raised inflation to 4% (lol, its much more). Not even to mention the "stimulus" following massive unemployment likely destroyed the prospects of many older people "on the edge" of having enough to retire. So even if you were astute, and you're a good investor keeping 10% or so cash liquid for things like this, you missed out. If you lost your job you missed out. The rich got even more rich and even the middle class blue collar guy putting $500 a month into his IRA couldn't take advantage of the cheap prices. It shook the paper hands out of the market who probably sold at a significant loss, a loss that they will probably never recover from in our life time. Now growth at any cost has the market at levels that are so insane it takes your breath away. We won't ever see PEs averaging around 20 again and hyperinflation is just around the corner. And people call it a conspiracy to say the fed is rigging the markets... At insuring Bezos' net worth accelerated to levels unseen before in the last 2,000 years of human history. But he's going to space today, no doubt thanks to all the TrumpBux spent at his store, so that's cool right?
It’s called buy, borrow, die. If you want to know how the wealthy never actually realize their gains but have back door unlimited access to capital google that.
The recession is coming back. Watch out below. Remember the sudden VIX spike yesterday and the drop today? VIX at 9.x will never again happen in our lifetimes. Be lucky if you see it down to 14.x That is a new baseline. I should know, I am long the indices.