Fox cable hosts are doing the job of the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein, by admitting that the economy under President Biden is strong. Bernstein joins MSNBC’s Ali Velshi to discuss the latest “expectation-busting” jobs report.
A lot of great speculation that has absolutely nothing to do with how the economy is doing right now, which is what I thought we were talking about.
Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough: the stock market is correlated with economic health but does not measure it directly. In the first half of 2023 the stock market was erratic due to rising interest rates while the real economy–measured by unemployment rates, salaries, etc–was quite healthy. Conversely, the post-2008 recovery was anemic at best for the non-rich while the stock market rallied to all time highs. There’s a reason I’ve never once mentioned the stock market while making the case that the economy is healthy.
Put another way: your predicted future slump in tech stocks does not therefore mean the economy more broadly will suffer.
And that’s assuming your prediction plays out, and that remains to be seen. After all, I’ll bet you were predicting that Facebook is on the decline, and yet they announced a truly astonishing quarter.
And again, none of this is relevant to the state of the economy right now.