📉 Why recessions are bad

Also: 5 Quick Questions for … policy analyst Eli Dourado on the potential and challenges of geothermal energy

In This Issue

The Essay: Why recessions are bad

5QQ: 5 Quick Questions for … policy analyst Eli Dourado on the potential and challenges of geothermal energy

Micro Reads: mini nuclear reactions, CRISPR and carbon capture, vaccines for cancer, and more …

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Quote of the Issue

“Do not waste any energy, make it useful” - Wilhelm Ostwald

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The Essay

📉 Why recessions are bad

This might have been the week when the national conversation about the US economy changed. To concerns about rising prices, you can now add worries about Federal Reserve actions to deflate rising prices. As one JPMorgan trader put it, “We are past inflation at this point. The only thing confirmed yesterday [by the Federal Reserve announcing its biggest rate hike since 1994] is that the Fed will (continue) to do whatever it takes to get inflation back to target. If that means slowing the economy to a halt and crashing the stock market, so be it.”

Will the Powell Fed push the economy into recession? Must the Powell Fed push the economy into recession? Either way, most economists think recession odds are rising, and fast. A whopping 70 percent of them polled by the Financial Times think the US economy will suffer a recession next year. Most Americans would probably disagree — but only because they think a recession is already here: