Bezos Versus Yellen, Is US In A Recession?

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that she did not see signs of a recession in the near term as the US economy rebounded from six months of contraction.

Yellen also noted the third quarter GDP data released Thursday underscored the strength of the US economy less than two weeks from the midterm elections.

“Look, what we’re seeing right now is solid growth this quarter. Growth has obviously slowed following a very rapid recovery from high unemployment,” Yellen said when asked about whether the latest GDP data softened any recession concerns”.

Yellen’s optimism comes amid growing concern from economists and finance officials that a recession is likely at some point in the next year, but was based in part on elements of the latest data that showed signs a necessary slowdown in key areas of the economy.

“These are problems we don’t have, because of what the Biden administration has done,” she added. “So, often one doesn’t get credit for problems that don’t exist.”

Everyone is getting prepared for the possibility of a recession, including Jeff Bezos. The US billionaire Amazon founder and executive chairman said to “batten down the hatches” in an earlier tweet in October.

Bezos was replying to a comment by Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” where he said in the “distribution of outcomes” there is a “good chance we could have a recession”. A “distribution of outcomes” is a statistical method that shows all of the possible outcomes of a situation, think of the most common, the “bell curve”.

It can be hard to think of the economy moving forward in times when mortgage rates are rising steeply, inflation is still high and dismissals are happening everywhere. The economy and the labour market are stronger than they may appear on the surface according to US Secretary of Labour Marty Walsh.

“I still think that we’re going to have job gains as we move into the end of this year, early next year. A lot of people are still looking at different jobs,” Walsh said adding that “We saw a lot of moving around over this last course of the year. People leaving jobs, getting better jobs, and I’m not convinced yet that we’re headed towards that.”