Could a Housing Recession Take Down the U.S. Economy?

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News Commentary, News

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One year ago, it was a matter of conventional wisdom among experts that the U.S. was on the brink of a recession. They were wrong. The latest GDP report showed America’s real output growing at a 4.9 percent annualized rate. That's huge. But just as we zagged a year ago, when we criticized recession predictions, I want to zag again today. It is a matter of broad conventional wisdom that the U.S. economy right now is doing really well. And, for now, it is. But challenges abound, including "higher-for-longer" interest rates, a recession in the apartment construction market, and ongoing global mayhem. Bloomberg columnist Conor Sen counts the five biggest risks to economic growth in the next year—and makes his official economic prediction for 2024. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Conor Sen Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What would you do if you got scammed?
0:03.4	Would you suffer in silence or would you do something about it?
0:07.0	Well I got scammed once and this is the story of what I did.
0:10.9	I'm Justin Sales, the host of the Wedding Scammer, a true crime podcast from The Ringer,
0:15.7	and for seven episodes, we're hunting a comment.
0:18.5	A guy with a lot of aliases, a guy who's ruined a lot of weddings. And with the help of some friends, I just might be able to catch him.
0:26.4	Listen to the wedding scammer on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:32.4	Today we're looking at the U.S. economy, the shockingly resilient U.S. economy, and
0:37.2	why it so often seems to defy the predictions of experts.
0:41.9	One year ago, it was a matter of conventional wisdom that the American economy
0:46.6	was in a terrible place, that we were on the verge of a recession. Most Americans, if you
0:51.3	asked them, told surveys surveys we were already in a downturn.
0:54.0	If you asked bank analysts, they told their investors in the media that we were on the brink of a recession.
0:59.0	If you asked the most eminent economists like Larry Summers, they would say, look, well, you consider the basic structure of the economy in 2022,
1:07.0	you have high inflation plus low unemployment, we've never wriggled out of a crisis like this without a major downturn that destroyed hundreds
1:13.2	of thousands of jobs, and therefore a recession is inevitable.
1:16.6	If you ask the most sophisticated probability models, they claim that a recession was nearly
1:21.8	inevitable, one famous, now infamous, probably-evi. They claimed that a recession was nearly inevitable.
1:22.7	One famous, now infamous, probability model algorithm put together by Bloomberg
1:27.4	Economist said there was a 100% chance that within the next 12 months we would have a downturn.
1:34.8	It is now 13 months later, and we do not.
1:38.6	Last week, the U.S. government reported that real GDP grew last quarter by 4.9% at an annualized rate.
	...

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