 All right, are we in a recession? This is going to be, I think, fairly quick. But there's a big discussion right now. Is the United States in a recession? Isn't it economists are fighting? The Biden administration, of course, is claiming no, we're not. And anyway, if anybody's going to declare a recession, it has to be the NBER, the National Bureau of Economic Research, because traditionally they do it. But they do it months later. So what help is that? But other economists are saying, wait, wait, wait. Usually two quarters of negative GDP growth signal a recession. So we're in a recession right now, and we should declare a recession. And of course, this is all partisan. The left wants you to think that there's no recession because they don't want you to think the economy is doing badly. The right wants you to think that the economy is a lot worse than it really is because they want to gain your vote in the midterm election. So this is completely political. Because the fact is that who cares? Are we in a recession? Probably not. If we aren't, we're in a very, very mild recession. It's almost never the case that we're in a recession, and manufacturing production is actually going up. It's almost never the case that we're in a recession, and unemployment is as low as it is right now, and we're not seeing it rise. I think we're heading towards a recession. I think all the signals are pointing towards things getting worse, the economy getting worse. I just don't think we're probably in one right now. We're probably heading towards it. There's a good article by one of my favorite economists these days, Scott Linsicum, on this. And it basically is a recession. Recessions, we're wasting time finding about definitions that are working for solutions. He's absolutely right. We've got a recession. The recession is being caused by constraints on supply, which means over by regulation. The recession is caused by too much government spending, which is increasing inflation expectations. Inflation is going to be caused by the stupid bill that Manchin has agreed to, which they're calling what is the Inflation Reduction Act. But it's actually going to be an inflation increasing act, because all the spending is front loaded. All the spending happens right now. The taxes come later. You could argue that raising taxes reduces inflation, maybe, but not if you increase taxes in the future and you're spending right now. So it has no impact. No, it has an impact. It increases inflation because it increases the amount of spending in the economy. GDP generally, they talk about two negative quarters of GDP. GDP numbers are not very good numbers. They overestimate things like the difference between imports and exports in a kind of, I don't think in a helpful way. The way it calculates government spending, so-called government investment, all of that is fakery. So GDP are not good numbers to estimate economic growth. The fact is that the economy is still doing fairly well when it comes to employment, when it comes to production, when it comes to job creation. The economy is doing fairly well, but all of those things are slowing and there's significant indications that things are going to get worse. I'd also say that there's significant reason to believe that inflation is not going to get better or if it gets better, it won't, it's not sustainable. That is, the Fed is being too timid and until the government gives some kind of indication that is interested and committed to reducing government deficits, inflation expectations, I think, will remain relatively high. So this Inflation Reduction Act, which hopefully cinema will kill, cinema will kill, Senate to Cinema from Arizona will kill, is a disaster and terrible for inflation. So is the CHIP Act. The CHIP Act, 79 billion semiconductor subsidies don't do good for production in the United States, don't do good for allocation of capital in the United States and only increase government spending and therefore increase inflationary pressures ultimately. So instead what the government should be doing at the federal level is cutting spending, what they should be doing is dramatically reducing regulation, what they should be doing is basically encouraging supply, encouraging manufacturing, encouraging trade, encouraging global trade and trade within the United States. They should be getting out of the way of consumers and producers. That's how you would use the probability of a recession and at the end of the day, recessions matter. What really matters is not the definition of a recession. What really matters is standard of living quality of life, standard of living quality of life going up or down and with inflation right now, quality of life is going down. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. So standard of living is going down and standard of living going down. That's what matters and that's not gonna be captured by the numbers. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live and for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.