NPR.

Are we in a recession?

That is a question we've heard a lot recently on the indicator.

And in the voice in my brain.

Yes, because the data is really confusing.

The jobs market has been running really hot, but output growth is falling a little.

The world looks really scary.

Have you even heard the word stack flation, a stagnant economy with high inflation?

Is that what's happening?

The last time we felt like this was like 1980, at the time the Fed chair Paul Volcker

was really unapologetic about needing to jack up the interest rates and cause short-term

economic damage to fight inflation.

But you know, you can't deal with that problem by simply saying we're going to let inflation

go ahead and we're trying to combat the inflation.

And as a result, unemployment would reach nearly 8%.

More than double what we have today.

Really tough times.

And so you would think people would be sitting around listening to sad ballads to go with

the sad times.

But that is actually not the case.

Oh yeah.

In that year 1980, Queen was number one on the charts with crazy little thing called love.

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