Binder’s Recession Bind A Whopper?

Fee Fi Fo Fum do we smell a RECESSION coming on as economy shrank 1.4% this yr & inflation accelerates? Princeton’s Prof Alan Binder says, if so, his progressive pals in Joe’s WH have learned the lessons of past fiascos & it is “unlikely to be a whopper.” Promise?

Was the professor’s allusion to a “big lie” or “over-hyped burger” a Freudian slip? Writing for the WSJ, Mr. Binder recalled the recessions of the 1970s and early 1980s (for some reason not dipping into Obama’s post-2008 crash/recession/stagnation cycle) and noted how economists have “learned their lesson.” He explained: “One big difference is that now the Federal Reserve and other central banks understand stagflation much better. In 1973 it was a puzzling new phenomenon, and no one knew how to think about it.” He goes on to tie inflation with employment with ya da, ya da and concludes: “The confusion led to vacillations in policy.”

Fine. Most conservatives reacting to the current bad economic news seem to at least echo Binder’s lack of clarity. Here’s what’s disturbing about the Prof’s analysis and assurance that a deep recession is not all that certain this time around: If the FED and central banks “learned their lessons” from past mistakes, including “confusion” that led to “vacillations in policy,” WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG FOR TODAY’S FED TO SEE (AND ACT TO MITIGATE) THE CURRENT INFLATION AND ITS LIKELY LIMITING IMPACT ON GROWTH so that we are hoping against hope, again grasping at straws, to fight the looming stagnation vs recession that no one seems to know ya da about for sure?

Davd Soul