he s actually done. so there s never any upside in letting joe biden speak injo public. d but unfortunately for the white house, sometimes you don t have a choice. disasters happenn ha. and when they do, the public expect somebody to pretend to be president. the american economy a is currently a disaster. therefore, joe biden had to h talk. so his aides dutifully let him out to the podium today to say something edifying about it. what happened next has got to be one of the weirdest presidential briefings ever conducted. new economic numbers show has declined for two quarters in a row. that s the definition of a recession. we re in a recession. that s why joe biden had tofi hold the briefingng. and yet biden never once mentioned those numbers, not a single time other than that, mrs. lincoln, how was the play? it was completely bizarre. instead, biden simply announced that there is no recession in the united states no matter what you may have noticed aboutt your own country. i
the technical definition of recession. cess to be thed same . ben white, the sameit political pundit. and then ine? january of this year, which is twenty, twenty two , we think the ap reported the same thingrt and we re quoting mexico snt economy entered a technical recession at the end ofcess last year with two consecutive quarters of contraction. oh, wow. so it turns out that wasri the definition prior to two weeks. in fact, that s beendi the definition for decades. in fact, to find it in everyctco economic textbook i ve written, it s all over the archives, the ap, which because we re paid to doen, we slog through today. here s one example of what french economy fallsench back i recession, the ap reported back in 2013. here s a direct quote from the article a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters dive of negative grow oh, you re not insane. no one goes you you re not. hallucinating. even cnn used to sayay this is cnn white house correspondent john harwood wrote on augusto
but still, the food banks director told a local news station there, quote,ew since october, we ve tripled the number of families we re month. every she had that three hundred of the eighteen hundred families she f served this month are firt time visitors. they haven t spent years at the food bank. they need to now because i useonomy is in so the word recession outside st. mary s food bank in phoenix, the ap reported that hundreds of families lined up this month. . e went around the block the food banks main distribution center served four thousand two hundredn seventy one families in just one week last month. that slath 78% increase compareo last year, according the ap quote. families lined up at the distribution center every weekday for an emergency government food box stuffed with goods suched canned beans, peanut butter and rice.. that s a bread line by the way. that s a bread line in the united states . did you see that on nbc? nightly news? probably not. what s happening ever. al
more quoting recession equals economy shrinks for two quarters. oh, wow. in fact, not to belabor the point, even brian deese, who is now the top white house economic adviser, used to run with that definition and we re quoting economists have a technical definiti ofcu recession, which is twoti consecutive quarters of negative growth. he wrote that back iner g g 200. unfortunately for him, we found it. and yet this week everything is different because you can t say stewardess anymore. positions new is quote, two negative quarters of gdp growth is not the technicalec definition of recession. wow. okay, if you say so because inbe the beginning was the word you are god now. but that does raise the question. if it s not a recession, thenist what is it? well, for this and all other important matters, including marital questions, we go toto the white house press secretaryy who informs us it s not a a recession, it s quote,t a transition. when youit look at it more broadly at the data. and that
that s the word from ben white, who is the chief economics reporter at politico. u and he s backed up by the associated press, which is totallys just today. the ap reported that, quote, the u.s. economymy shrank forer a second straight quarter, raising fears the nation may be approaching a recession.ng but we re getting close now. in other words, to declining quarters of growth is not a recession, just like the feded said. h and thatou sounds definitive. it s always been that way as long as you don t have a memory that extends past, say, last week because it was a few weeks ago before the white house declared otherwise, that everyone was saying differently, including ben white and the ap, they are still using the term stewardess. they were using the old definition. one exampleefin. okay, how about this june? twenty second of this year,e this same benbe white, assuming he s real, wrote in politico, which unfortunately is a mere quoting i m sorry to report that the conditions are ripe fo