Are recessions normal?

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Recessions are on lots of people’s minds these days, including Jerome Powell’s. The Federal Reserve chief told Congress on Wednesday that a recession is a “possibility” as the Fed tries to tame inflation. So today, a listener wonders whether recessions are inevitable in our modern economy. We’ll break it down. Plus, we take more of your questions about the effectiveness of gas boycotts, why the Sunshine State — Florida — isn’t leading on solar energy and Kimberly’s favorite cocktail ingredient, bitters!

Here’s everything we talked about today:

FAQs o n recessions from the National Bureau of Economic Research
“Odds of a recession rising but vary widely” from Marketplace
“Why isn’t the Sunshine State the leader in using solar power?” from The Sun-Sentinel
“Would a Gas Boycott Actually Lower Prices at the Pump?” from Money magazine
“< Oil: Less Than Zero” from Marketplace alum Stacey Vanek Smith at NPR
“How new job-search technologies are affecting the U.S. labor market” from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Keep sending us your questions. Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice message at (508) 827-6278 or (508) U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, I'm Kyle Rizdal, welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make
0:10.1	sense.
0:11.1	And I'm Kimberly Adams, thank you for joining us for What Do You Want to Know Wednesday,
0:16.1	and that means it's time for all of us to get just a tad bit smarter by the way of
0:21.8	answering your questions.
0:23.9	If you've got one, you would like us to find the answer to, or that we might happen to
0:26.9	know the answer to.
0:28.5	You know what to do, email us, makemesmart at Marketplace.org, leave us a voice mail, our
0:32.0	numbers 508UB Smart.
0:35.0	Okay, our first question today comes from Dale in North Carolina.
0:40.1	He wants to know why does the economy go into recession periodically?
0:45.5	Is there a common cause or is it just a common consequence of multiple causes?
0:51.4	Over to you, Kai.
0:52.6	Yes, actually, to both of those questions.
0:56.7	So look, first of all, thank you very much coming to my TED Talk.
1:01.7	So look, first of all, there is this thing called the business cycle, right?
1:05.8	And it's a cycle for a reason.
1:07.5	There are peaks and troughs.
1:10.5	Troughs obviously are recessions.
1:12.6	Peaks are the point at which a recession starts.
1:17.1	So let me explain.
1:18.5	And we're talking about this obviously because recession is on everybody's mind these days.
	...

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