>The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy, rose 3% in December, according to a separate release. That matched the consensus forecast but kept the pivotal inflation measure well above the Fed’s 2% target.
That's a near total disaster of a report. That inflation number is about to jump even more as the RAM shortage flows through the supply chain. This and the jobs revision basically confirm that we're in full blown stagflation
It could be more than that. The largest effect is going to come from all 'budget' brands essentially going out of business because their model doesn't work with these DRAM and NAND shortages/prices.
For the next ~5 years, those who have resources will be dictating pricing....unless demand takes a dive
Data companies need customers.. of course we still control demand.
Their model assumes customers for that hardware. Thats not a given, especially because theyre essentially relying on the rest of the corporate world to be their main customers.
We already see many companies cutting back, warning of slowing sales, etc. Give it a few months, hiring freezes / layoffs & no more optional expenses like AI data center spending. Then that filters up to the datacenters who have unused hardware they likely bought using loans with interest on them (so they cant wait forever for the demand to show up).
Then it crashes from there, if theres a glut of unused data center capacity they have to stop buying it.. or wont be able to fulfill the full contract
The house of cards of borrowing ultimately relies on demand being very high, or it becomes a real domino effect. One company has a glut of hardware / not enough demand, makes less money, they dont enter into a new contract because they cant, and the money stops flowing around that loop..
There is ABSOLUTELY no overlap. The government was shut down for 43 days and probably halved the GDP growth.
This is doomed and perma online people using this as an opportunity to doom and feel correct before more CPI and GDP reports release that are solid like they have been all of 2025 except this one.
Y’all are not economists, you’re r/politic subscribers roleplaying as people who care about the economy and stock market
Reddit: Everyone will be FORCED to purchase LUXURY electronics even though they don't have JOBS because no one can afford to buy ANYTHING, so everyone will have to work EVEN MORE jobs for LESS PAY!
You guys can't even keep straight what the disaster of the hour is. If the price of the iphone goes up $150 don't buy one. If computers get more expensive, keep the dang one you have for longer.
I think this is going to cause the AI bubble to pop. RAM prices at this level is an actual national security threat considering how integrated it is into everything we do. This feels like the end of the post GFC boom.
I mean, I hear what you're saying, but the fire burns when it's out of fuel. Once we literally run out of this shit, and we are currently experiencing pretty heavy shortages, how do you scale everything up?
between ram and data storage, these items are connected will every single aspect of the economy that consumers interact with and they have all been hoovered up by a few hyperscalers.
Like they even understand any of this - Trump just wants tech execs to cradle his balls once in a while and somehow profit off of whatever is going on. He’ll find a way to pour billions more into data centers and make sure his kids profit from something in the whole process.
Our president has already sold us out to the AI overlords. Not a chance this happens. We are all more likely to live on the streets than this changing.
The issue isn’t price exactly, it’s that RAM is hard to produce and takes years to scale up production for. We are literally running out of ram with supply orders backed up for years already
If you think this is full blown stagflation, just wait. Unemployment is still somehow under 5%, inflation 3%, interest rates still low by historical standards.
A lot of people in this sub have been on a roll calling basically everything stagflation, when you see it used on /r/economics it more or less has no meaning.
There's some divergent risks going on right now, but ultimately the supply constraints in tariffs are never going to be sufficient enough to create enduring stagflationary conditions if we see a noteworthy drop in demand. It's just not possible, you need a massive supply shock - and tariffs aren't that.
True. I was a kid and remember that, it impacted my parents pretty hard. They did a good job keeping ke from noticing until I was older and then realized what was going on.
I did all my electronic purchasing last year, as I figured Trump tariffs would trash the economy and make everything super expensive. Glad I did, spend 300 $ on hard drives last year, that would be a 800 $ purchase today.
Do you think this will affect the used market? For example, I buy music equipment. I won't be buying anything new, just used. I wonder if the downward pressure will raise prices among the used market.
For sure, as new stuff gets more and more expensive, and some of it won't even make it into the country. People will have to buy used stuff just to complete whatever they are working on.
I think you can make this a little better, by buying on facebook market place and the like where people might not know, or are just trying to offload older stuff without throwing it away, compared to site like ebay where prices tend to be more dynamic.
Facebook marketplace is starting to scare me. I'm seeing people selling stuff and their reasoning is to pay bills. I've never seen it so frankly put, but it's been like that as of late.
Sorry for the tangent. Good point. I'm definitely going to check marketplace.
Yes. I bought 4x12tb used data center hdds for $89 per drive from goharddrives. The prices for used drives like this (if they are even available) is ridiculous.. up like 3x in price... used, as I said.
Right. It is useful for some things and I get how it can be a tool but shoehorning it everywhere is disastrous. Humans can do a lot of this and use far fewer resources in the process. Use AI for running traffic lights and stuff
If AI even had a shot at accomplishing the goals it tried to sell to us in the beginning, like curing cancer and genetic diseases, then maybe some of the investment would be worth it. But all it's being used for is to increase the unemployment line and create deep fakes, child porn and other dystopian outcomes.
That's not even close to the main focus of AI and you know it. Yes, everyone forgot about alphafold because it's not what 99% of the AI funding and power is going towards. Besides we will all die from the other malefactors born of the AI industry before Alphafold cures cancer.
Your comment didnt say anything about it being the main focus, and I don't see how that's even relevant. Computers weren't created to further cancer research, but obviously they're critical to it.
Yeah. It’s pretty crazy right? I’m glad we have competent leade — oh what’s that? The president is suing the IRS to get 10 billion and just announced yesterday the US will pay him 10 billion for joining the Gaza peace conference? K.
There have been warning signs in the previous two quarters, contrary to headline readers who swore up and down that "they" (never really made clear who) must have been cooking the books to make them look so good.
The Economy is lukewarm and has been for about two years now, the people trying to find a conspiracy in that or the administration trying to take a victory lap because of a good reading here and there are both wrong.
Lol not at all. This GDP reflects a record government shutdown and the import numbers were skewed because of massive front loaded chip buying from TSMC. Consumer spending was resilient and manufacturing had a great January rebound. I don't think this report is a doomsday prophecy.
“consumer spending” - have you not been keeping track of the “k shaped” economy phenomenon weve been experiencing? thats not what i would consider resilient consumer spending.
Nah- rate drops are the exact opposite of what’s needed now. Steady as she goes, or even some minor rate increases are appropriate.
J Pow wants to be the guy who engineered the soft landing, not the punching bag for the next guy. He isn’t going to make any intentionally bad decisions on his way out.
There you have it. This weird economic model that seemingly prior reasonable men have flipped to support with open arms gave us a real barn burner of 2.2% growth, a decline from Biden's last year.
This is what happens when people ignore and even promote the bold face lie that importing companies don't pay the tariffs and that is just one of the asinine policies of this admin.
When someone says they will fix a problem in a day and the problem is still around a year later people are right to complain about the person who made the promise.
That's not 2.2% real GDP per capita though. Controlled for +0.5% population growth which was measured at midyear, real GDP per capita probably +1.6%.
That's not a break from +1.8% real per capita for the US from 2024 on 2023. But it is slowing down.
Compared to a UK and Japan
Japan : +1.1% real, controlled for -0.5% population growth, real GDP per capita probably +1.6%. A big step up from +0.5% in 2024 on 2023.
United Kingdom: +1.3% real, controlled for +0.3% population growth, real GDP per capita probably +1% (ONS has published this estimate here ). Still weak compared to 1980-2008 trend but a big step up from basically 0% for 2024 on 2023. Slightly stronger growth combined with much lower estimated net migration.
Estimates for Japan and UK are probably more solid (gov and large newspaper sources published recently), though may be revised.
Canada and Eurozone are probably around +1.3% per head, which is particularly a step up from -1.5% in 2024 for Canada. (Canada is estimated to have seen +1.3% GDP with no population growth after a reversal on their migration policies, which can only mean an increase per head).
I don't expect this narrowing of the US GDP per head growth lead to get as much play in the British press as the post-Brexit and post-Russian Invasion widening of the US lead.
Yeah I know, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. It's pretty much always international investors saying that. They say it under US domestic economic news, which has little to nothing to do with the forex risk they got hit by. I've corrected 4-5 people but got tired of doing it.
It's so bad, almost nobody on this sub seems to understand what on earth DXY is or what it means, they're just out here doing all sorts of random math. "well, DXY is down 10%, so my cheeseburger costs 10% more automatically" type logic lol.
Did you get paid the same this month? Did the cost of the cheeseburger in the currency you are paid in change? The no, the movement in DXY is not relevant for any of this lol.
In a vacuum sure but you don't want this with the baggage.
We should be definitely higher with these tax breaks but tariffs and dumb policy is killing the economy. It's also pretty bad because our deficit is growing and people are getting in more debt. A monkeys paw for 2.2% growth lol
These are very immediate numbers for the economy. Most government policies don’t take a growing economy to a mostly stalled one in less than a year. Much of the benefits from the infrastructure bill Biden passed didn’t even kick in until around now (but trump cancelled many of them when he would likely get the credit)
It is but it's not what most Americans THINK will happen. Most think it happens almost literally overnight. There have been a lot of comments on this very sub by people were surprised by this.
If he had kept the tariffs he was planning to impose in June of last year, it would've been much more readily apparent for prices in the economy. I had vendors telling me they were going up 20-25% in June because of them, only to dial back to 7.25% in the end.
And this is me being in manufacturing and negotiating inputs for use in assembled final products. So, you can imagine the knock-on effects of that.
That being said, even after the news Friday from SCOTUS, all steel and aluminum are still subject to tariffs under Section 301 and 231, meaning 25% and 50% tariff rates (I can't recall which is at 25 and which 50% atm like I should), so there are still significant costs built into every product using steel or aluminum in the US today by default from tariffs imposed by the admin.
I have to assume at this time that the K-shaped economy we must certainly live in now, and I do make products that are considered luxury goods that is buoyed by the k-shape economy, is really doing the work in masking the pain and impact of these tariffs on every day Americans and the corresponding economic activity that is reported being reflective of that.
Ah, my apologies for my confusion. It appeared as if you were implying that this was happening anyways even from Biden, and that Trump and his policies had 0 to do with where we are today.
I think the comment chain led me to infer something otherwise from your comment by the time I got to it.
There are a lot of bad-faith attempts to wave away poor economic numbers the entire time Trump has been in office once again, so it's hard to always pick up when that's not the case nowadays.
While China’s GDP grew at a rate of 5% YOY for 2025 after we “pwned” them by slapping insane tariffs on them.
Next “logical” argument from the far right is “but do you trust those numbers???”
Sure do. Almost every metric that can be tracked externally is off the charts. Shipping container traffic, export $ volume, etc is posting double digit gains. The message to read between the lines though is they must have turned around to the world and said “we’ll sell these items to you for 10% off.” Which worked out for them… they’ve been building the distribution chain for their products since 2014 and have been waiting for the big red handle to pull to execute on disengaging from the US’s trade. We were only 15.4% of their exports in 2024 anyways.
Their next move is going to be to flip all of these countries to use the Renminbi as their trading currency and reserve. China is already the primary trading partner with >50% of the countries in the world, and those countries are going to be negatively impacted by staying on the USD while it’s in decline. The BRICS nations comprise 1/4th of the world trade and 1/2 of the world’s population. Trump already knows this is coming and is terrified of it, indicated by his TS post the last time they met saying he would enact a 100% tariff on any country that agreed to use the renminbi as their reserve. Since there was no other plan put in place after that statement, this isn’t preventing it from happening, it’s giving our economic adversaries more time to plan ahead for the moment they flip. We’re absolutely in a trade war, but we’re not using any real tools to affect our adversaries, we’re just pushing self inflicting damage while Trump simultaneously props up regimes that are failing with the policies he’d really like to enact.
>bold face lie that importing companies don't pay the tariffs
Would it be better if we replaced that revenue with a corporate tax increase? Then we know for sure American companies and American companies alone are footing the bill.
Which entity is this assumption about? State and local governments would hardly replace existing property taxes with something nearly identical and the Federal government doesn't have constitutional authority to do so.
Hello the internet exists and I will share it with you for free.
Economic Inefficiency & GDP Loss: Tariffs are considered highly inefficient; studies indicate they can reduce GDP and wages by more than twice as much as a corporate tax increase that raises the same amount of revenue.
Consumer Impact (Inflation): Tariffs often act as a hidden sales tax, leading to higher consumer prices for goods (electronics, clothing, food). In contrast, corporate taxes are paid out of profits, which may or may not be passed to consumers, but generally act more slowly on consumer prices.
Profitability vs. Revenue: Tariffs are paid regardless of whether a company is profitable or taking a loss, making them riskier for struggling businesses. Corporate taxes are only paid on profit.
Retaliation: Tariffs frequently trigger retaliatory tariffs from other countries, harming exporters (e.g., agriculture), a consequence not typically associated with corporate tax hikes.
Supply Chain Disruption: Tariffs create uncertainty that disrupts global supply chains, making companies hesitant to invest, whereas corporate tax increases affect the net return on investment directly.
Tariffs have their place when used narrowly and in targeted ways, not as some broad sweeping threat tactic toward the whole globe.
>You have it backwards. If you steal an election, you can deny your opponent adequate secret service, then let 5.56 fly through their ears (if they get lucky)
>Requiring photo ID means the entire Democratic Party needs to be re-invented. Fake headlines won't do it. Kamala's whopping 8 electoral votes from states requiring photo ID aren't gonna cut it.
daily reminder that right wing populists exist on this sub too. Funny how their economic policies seem to mirror the left huh?
Fact 1: Bigly big deficit
Fact 2: tariffs have not protected industry, increased manufacturing, or opened new markets.
So yes, we need to raise taxes and spread it across the economy rather than only targeting importers unless your plan is to march us straight to a debt load 200% of our GDP.
You debt people are going to decline the standard of living in this country
So the unemployment numbers will be increasing by at least 1 individual after this report? There's no way this administration doesn't look at those responsible for this report and look at removing them somehow. What a mess.
They already want to punish the NY Fed for putting out a report that shows 90% of tariffs are paid for by the consumer. I guess Hassett didn't see the handful of others issued prior by the likes of GS for example that basically had the same number, but as we all know Goldman is known for hiring people that can't pass a "first year econ class" as Hassett put it.
To be fair, people on Reddit are heavily misrepresenting what both sides mean in this. Saying the exporter pays the tariffs means they lower the cost so the total amount to the importer is the same. Saying the importer pays the tariff means the exporter didn’t lower costs by more than the tariff so that the total cost to the importer goes up. Technically importers pay 100% of tariffs, but the definition above is what people generally mean because it makes more sense to model it that way.
They might be wrong technically, but they’re effectively right. When a tax is put on something, it increases the total cost. In effect, there’s no difference between the importer and exporter paying it. The total cost gets paid. The tax comes out of it.
Yes and no, in a given transaction you're right that assigning the "cost" to one party or the other is generally a matter of semantics.
But we can utilize data and studies to see who's absorbing that cost - IE are manufacturers cutting prices? Is volume dropping? Are consumers purchasing the same amount and paying more? Through this we can approximate how much of a given tax is being absorbed by one party or the other.
In this case, we have this: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is-paying-for-the-2025-u-s-tariffs/
And this: https://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Dateiverwaltung/IfW-Publications/fis-import/92fb3f30-07b8-4dcf-b2bc-fbefb831f1a1-KPB201_EN.pdf
Both finding that US consumers are generally absorbing around 90% of total tariff burden.
I completely agree with everything you said. The problem is people seem to be making a big deal out of the “who is directly paying it” rather than “who is effectively paying it.” Your last part is relevant because it says consumers are absorbing the costs but people the amount of people focusing on the technical part is what bothers me. My go to example is Nintendo. When the Switch 2 came out, Nintendo announced they’d eat the cost and that’s what they did. But then people still tried to act like the people buying the Switch 2 were eating the cost.
> The problem is people seem to be making a big deal out of the “who is directly paying it” rather than “who is effectively paying it.”
Well yeah, online there's always going to be some contingent of person who's less concerned with reality and more concerned with narrative construction. With something like this it's not worth trying to help them, like my boi J cole said - they don't wanna be saved.
Because in effect, they partly did. This isn’t just my wording. Exporters used the same language. They either “ate the tariff” or “passed it on” to the consumer.
>To be fair, people on Reddit are heavily misrepresenting what both sides mean in this. Saying the exporter pays the tariffs means they lower the cost so the total amount to the importer is the same. Saying the importer pays the tariff means the exporter didn’t lower costs by more than the tariff so that the total cost to the importer goes up. Technically importers pay 100% of tariffs, but the definition above is what people generally mean because it makes more sense to model it that way.
I get what youre saying and all but youve put the brakes on at stop 1 of like a 4 stop train.
Yes, the importer pays the tariffs --which is arguably already at "Americans pay the tariffs" but the importer doesnt just eat that cost and lose money or make less (or they may depending on how their contracts are set up but even then they wont do that forever, as soon as the next contract comes up theyre done eating that cost and theyre passing it on), they just pass it on to the wholesaler who passes it on to the retailer who passes it on to the consumer
Agreed, but the report kind of confirmed my priors that there was no way corporations were going to "eat" these tariffs
That 10% we didnt pay for was probably due entirely to contract issues, i.e people with poorly executed contracts like that lady in the very beginning of this shit that was on the news that she had just signed a deal with Walmart at X price to supply her baby stuff and the tariffs made that impossible to do and there was no way for her to alter the terms
Which, imo, as a small business owner myself is simply inexcusable....How the fuck do you sign a deal without contingencies in it for cost overruns you arent responsible for.....ESPECIALLY after going through Covid just a couple years ago......I had 1 project i ate shit on due to a 25k dollar price increase on materials (im a remodel gc) because of the lumber supply shortage with covid, after that happened i called my lawyer and added a TON of language to protect myself from that ever happening again in the future, and it did, and im not the one that ate that cost increase
The Nintendo Switch 2 is a good example of a company that ate most of the tariff. They knew there’s only so much people would be willing to pay for a videogame console. They talked about it a lot. Granted they’re now prepping to increase costs to pass it on to the consumer, but for about a year now much of it was Nintendo eating the cost.
I have read this comment after literally every optically bad economic report since August last year and it hasn't eventuated.
The only head of an economic department that has been fired so far is Erika McEntarfer, who was fired over significant downwards revisions to the jobs numbers; revisions which Reddit simultaneously seems to believe (after the recent annual benchmarking) are legitimately signs of terrible initial estimates.
I thought according to this site the administration was fudging all the numbers?? But when bad numbers come out all of a sudden everybody trusts those.
I don't see how the market thinks we're getting 2 rate cuts this year with the data coming in. 180k jobs for the entire year is dire. Unless the Fed prioritizes employment and lets inflation go higher. Economy really seems like it's on the edge of the abyss.
Yep but where does the Fed draw the line? Inflation at roughly 3% already. Lower rates and let it go to 4-5%? A looming recession with already low rates and high inflation and we're fucked.
They won't cut for employment because they've already stated prior cuts didn't promote jobs, the cuts just promoted more spending into AI infrastructure and 100% of the GDP growth is AI infrastructure.
It's just wild how often people on this sub will openly lie and everyone just eats that shit up lol. This place is as bad as the conservative subs when it comes to rampant disinformation.
What's more wild, is you get people like the guy below who are so obsessed with their preconceived notions that you can spell out for them how they're incorrect and they just won't come to terms with that.
>In late 2025, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested that further interest rate cuts might not be the primary solution for the softening U.S. labor market, as job growth deceleration was driven by structural factors like decreased worker demand rather than high interest rates. While the Fed implemented cuts to address risks, Powell signaled that rate changes may not effectively boost employment under current conditions.
Not only is it not close, as I've outlined below it's a whole bastardization of what Powell actually said. OP quickly jumped to insults because they're unable to support their claims with information, typical MAGA shit.
It's just another example of how people who are completely clueless but super confident dominate the conversation here. Below the dude didn't even understand that cutting rates stimulates demand. Like, why some of these people think they've got the intellectual chops to start arguments like this is beyond me.
>Below the dude didn't even understand that cutting rates stimulates demand.
Not true. I never said that. I would never say that. Just another example of you completely failing to read carefully. You should go back and re-read this exchange and see how many things you misunderstood.
I never said rate cuts don’t stimulate demand
You jumped to insults first in your first response to me and I responded in a pretty level-headed way.
You incorrectly think I’m MAGA due to poor reading comprehension
You didn’t even notice that a quote from Powell that you yourself pasted proves you wrong.
See, this is always going to be the defining line between people like me and people like you who exist in a world of disinformation. And I mean, it's not your fault really, it is in a sense, but like I understand how you get there. Your "source" is an AI aggregation of forbes and investopedia articles written in the most dumbed down hyperbolic fashion possible. My source was having read these transcripts and speeches when they happened.
So what happens here is Powell (or anyone) makes a long form nuanced statement, someone at Investopedia realizes that most laymen are too stupid and/or lazy to read that, so they pull some snippets and write something clickbait for views. Then, the AI scrapes all that clickbait and presents a very matter of fact statement back to you, that statement is twice removed from the original one, and based on intentional clickbait.
So anyway, the listed sources there are all articles based on either the September or October press releases. You can just read those in full here:
>However, the layoff rate is also very low. So you’ve got a low—a low-firing, low-hiring environment. And the concern is that if you start to see layoffs, the people who are laid off won’t—there won’t be a lot of hiring going on. So that could very quickly flow into higher unemployment. In a healthier economy, healthier labor market, there would be jobs for those people. But now the hiring rate is very, very low. So that’s been a growing concern over the last few months, and it’s one of the reasons why we think it’s appropriate that we begin to shift our policy focus toward a more balanced one.
Which is spelling out that cutting rates more of a priority given the labor market, IE the opposite of what you and the above poster suggested.
And this from October:
> In addition, labor demand has declined, and so the labor—the unemployment rate has gone down, meaning that demand for workers has gone down a little more than supply. So that’s what’s going on, and—but it is mostly a supply function. It’s mostly a function of the change in supply, I think and many people think. So the question then is, what does—what does our tool do, which supports demand? And so—and I would just say, when you’re in a situation where job creation, if you adjust for likely overcounting in the way that BLS does its work, is pretty close to zero. So maximum employment doesn’t, on a sustainable basis, doesn’t—if you’re making, creating zero jobs, if it’s in equilibrium, if it’s in balance, it’s a pretty, as I said before, pretty curious balance. So I thought, and many of my colleagues thought—in fact, you’ve seen the last two meetings that it was appropriate for us to react by supporting demand with our rates. And we’ve done that—we’ve reduced so that rates are looser. I wouldn’t say that they’re accommodative right now, but they’re meaningfully less tight than they were. And that should help so that at least the labor market doesn’t get worse. It’s a complicated situation, and some people argue that this is supply and we really can’t affect it much with our tools, but others argue, as I do, that there is an effect from demand, and that we should use our tools to support the labor market when we see this happening.
and this:
> Yeah, I don’t—I don’t think interest rates are an important part of the AI—the data center story. I think—people think there are great economics in building these data centers, and they’re making a lot of money building them, and I think they have very high present value and all that sort of thing. It’s not really—it’s not about 25 basis points here or there. We use our tools to support the labor market and to create price stability. That’s what we do. That’s our two jobs, right? So we’re here to—by lowering rates at the margin, that will support demand, and that will support more hiring. And that’s why we do it. Now, no 25 basis point or even 50 basis point hike is going to be a dispositive thing. But, ultimately, lower rates will support more demand, and that’ll support hiring over time. And, of course, we also have to be careful about this, which is what we’ve been doing because we know where inflation is and we know—I’ve told you the story, this complicated story, but this is the best assessment that we can make and—but because there’s uncertainty around inflation and the path ahead for inflation, that’s why we’re going—that’s why the pace we’re going has been a careful one.
Again, very much directly contradicting both the dumb AI and more importantly blatantly in opposition to what the above poster said, that "prior cuts don't promote jobs". This is why you cannot go getting your information from the AI summaries - they're using clickbait articles written by laymen for laymen as their sources, and it's leaving you incredibly uninformed.
My best advice is that if you want to better understand and follow complex topics, ditch the AI and start reading the direct statements and primary sourcing for yourself. AI can’t really discern quality or accuracy of these articles, even when I instruct AI to form statements based only on direct transcripts or federal reserve publications it hallucinates and draws info from bullshit like the above.
Those are not the only sources saying that. Reuters, CNBC, CNN, and Fox Business are all linked in the AI summary I get. So either yours was different or more likely you are cherry-picking a few sources you didn’t like in bad faith. Anyway, the second quote you pasted yourself literally says some Fed members think it’s more of a supply issue and rate cuts won’t be effective. It says “some people“ and my understanding is he is referring to rate setters.
NavyDean simplified and lost some nuance and expressed more certainty about future decisions than they should have, obviously nobody knows right now. But for you to describe that as openly lying and just as bad as disinformation in conservative subs is completely inappropriate.
I’m not going to run around in circles with you - I’ve displayed directly what came out of Powells mouth. You’re linking me news articles, I’m linking you transcripts. This difference should be apparent to anyone who’s interested in economics, I’m guessing you’re relatively new to this topic and that’s fine, but understand the standard of sourcing and adjust how you gather information.
Absent you finding me a direct quote of Powell corroborating what you said, I think the smart move for you is to understand that you were misinformed because you didn’t understand the massive gap between reality, media written for laymen, and AI, and adjust your knowledge set accordingly moving forward.
You have a choice here - to be smart and learn something, or to do the typical uninformed Redditor thing and try to argue your way out of being wrong. Doing the latter never makes you more knowledgeable.
Agreed, but also that was 45 years ago and after a decade of stagflation with double digit inflation rates. I’m not sure we’ve got the willpower to do anything like it today.
Right, but that was the only other example of stagflation.
The Fed was clearly willing to jack up rates to fight inflation this time as well. They are also willing to leave them above R*, which they are doing now.
The idea that they are only focused on jobs is silly if you are looking from 2000-2020, there was no inflation
I think it's a matter of whether they want to test the waters with supporting jobs first like in the 70's, or skip to a disaster assumption of persistent stagflation at the first few signs of it and crush the market.
It's a terrible spot to be in, and I think the Fed should be given more levers of control; potentially some very small authority into fiscal policy about some small, graded, segmented tax multipliers they can add or take away from the current tax brackets. Something more than just a big "print money or crash the economy" button they have to press gingerly back and forth like manually tuning a PID loop with an 8 month response delay....what a fucking job. I am not envious.
Lmao, but reddit comment chains are built on someone feeling intellectually superior by citing one really niche one time specific thing that they can argue about
For one, that's one event in a crazy environment, but also the general sentiment is that with the benefit of hindsight Volker raised a bit too much. It's certainly not his fault, we know a lot more about monetary policy and the economy today, but you can compare the Fed's hikes tossing us in to a pretty tough recession in the 80 with the near soft landing we've experienced post covid to see some stark differences.
Prioritizing employment over inflation is always the right choice when employment is still sensitive to interest rates. Although, after a certain point, especially if inflation gets high enough, lowering interest rates stops spurring investment and lowering unemployment. At that point you don't want to lower further. Although, I don't know how you would know when to raise. Perhaps watching savings/investment numbers for guidance? The goal in such a situation is proportionally less savings and more investment.
In a normal market, I would say yes. With inflation rising it could create an issue later if we dip into a recession. We can't financially handle another QE like 2008 and the pandemic. That leaves rate cuts as pretty much the only tool in the Feds arsenal. We had rate cuts from last year have they had little impact on job creation thus far.
I'm a rando. I think the books are being cooked as far as GDP and unemployment go. What we are seeing promoted as "the numbers" are being "massaged" even more than "normal" times... I'm witnessing it via what's happening in my industry.
If they don’t want to be accused of faking stuff, maybe they shouldn’t have fired the BLS chief right after a bad jobs report… or decided on an economic policy of shooting yourself in the foot in order to claim a balance in trade deficit.
>maybe they shouldn’t have fired the BLS chief right after a bad jobs report
Erika McEntarfer got fired over two months of downwards revisions that were much larger than normal. Democrats spent months explaining that these revisions were standard practice and some error is normal.
Yet now there are many on this very sub that are pointing to similarly sized downwards revisions (the ~1m downwards annual benchmark) as evidence the estimates are terrible and that the administration is exaggerating jobs.
Ultimately, there are people who will distrust the BLS basically no matter what, just because the Other Guy is currently in charge.
To your point on Erika, perhaps it had something to do with Trump’s Truth Social post about how he was firing her. I would say anybody worth any level of non-partisanship will admit that it’s, at best, heavily skewed towards something that could be put as “Other Guy is currently in charge”. If the highest office in the land will throw a partisan fit, I sure as hell expect Redditors to be in the same boat.
All in all, yes, no matter what happens, people will claim “GOT YOU!”. What I can say is that there are a few irrefutable facts that I know of right now:
The ENTIRE world struggled with post-COVID inflation. It was not unique to the US.
Inflation has stabilized but costs have not come down.
AI is driving mass investment in certain sectors that is akin to the latest tech renaissance.
There are (relatively) a lot of experienced workers that have been laid off from large companies as they correct from COVID era hiring or AI changes.
You will never convince me that tariffs are the best solution to fixing trade deficits and the overall economy. The US had its manufacturing heyday. It is not coming back.
Overall, is Trump really that bad? The numbers don’t suggest it—at least not yet. The US economy has not been living on fundamentals for years now. We have one thing going for us: the USD being the world standard with a reliable credit rating. Something will have to give somewhere. Wealth cannot keep funneling to the top and there not be some kind of crunch where a lot of people suffer. It’s a delicate balance that must be maintained and I’m not optimistic that Trump’s approach keeps the boat steady.
Really not surprising it just took awhile for all the bad policy decisions to show up in the numbers.
Tariffs, wrecking government spending and government jobs, ai and lopsided capex investments, rampant inflation and cooking the books. It’s the report everyone was feeling for the last year.
Cutting government spending was probably the worst move. It had no impact on the debt, and all it did was hurt every sector of the economy, and permanently damaged US research.
I hope there is a period in my lifetime when republicans finally lose the “they are good for the economy” narrative. They have consistently performed worse than democrats on the economy while in office since the 1950s up until the present day.
>I hope there is a period in my lifetime when republicans finally lose the “they are good for the economy” narrative. They have consistently performed worse than democrats on the economy while in office since the 1950s up until the present day.
Its honestly infuriating to me too
And the fact that they run on cutting the budget deficit and then immediately explode the deficit even more as their first act in power is even more aggravating
We're a dumb country, like really fucking stupid stupid people live here and vote, its honestly really depressing
Unfortunately, people have consistently voted against their own interests. They ignore what the data says and go with their feelings. This does not lead to good economic policy.
1.4% is an abysmal number. The times this occurred in the last 25 years:
Q2 2001 - Q2 2002
Q1 2008 - Q4 2009
Q3 2011
Q1 2020 - Q4 2020
Q4 2022
Excluding the anomaly in Q4 2022, those were tough economic times. Based on current economic trends and historical data, this is more likely to be the beginning of a trend rather than an outlier.
Please stop being dramatic. The government shutdown was always going to reduce the number by around 1%, and the only part that was really below expectations was trade. The actual parts of GDP that you should care about, consumption and investment, both grew by a solid ~2.5% qoq annualized.
I don’t get why people in this sub are so obsessed with seeing doom, gloom and conspiracy in everything. The report was fine, nothing great, no reason to claim the sky is falling
I didn’t say anything of the sort, but it was certainly less because it was a partial shutdown only. Every credible economist said months ago the shutdown would reduce q4 gdp by around 1%. How do you think they estimated that if not for the impact of previous shutdowns?
If this shutdown showed up in the GDP reports, the last ones did too.
The 2018-19 shutdown was about half of the economic impact that Q4 26 was - about half the furloughed employees and half the fiscal impact to the budget.
Q4 2018 saw GDP growth of 2.2%. Extrapolate the above - if the impact of the 18-19 shutdown was half the size, we should have had 2.7% growth just like how we should have had 2.4% growth with this report.
Q1 2019 reflects the picture - growth of 3.1%
So even taking into account our shutdown, GDP growth would have been lower in 2025 than it was the last time we had a major shutdown by 0.3%.
It's not "oh it's okay, it was the shutdown" - it's "we're on a downward trend, and you're trying to convince yourself that it's anything but."
What was the change in the size of the workforce then vs 2025? Perhaps you should be adjusting for growth in GDP per person? Or perhaps worker? Productivity growth was great last year, after all.
The fact of the matter is that understanding what is going on requires a lot more than extrapolating data and making sweeping claims about trends.
Fact and logic is the complete opposite of your original comment. You clearly are clueless about what economic statistics actually mean, with your dramatic pronouncements of doom that are so far removed from the reality that the report was not that bad. How do you think investment and consumption both growing at around 2.5% is bad?!?
Ad hominem. Look it up. Also, my initial comment quite literally included the factual data to demonstrate how the current GDP growth compares to that of the last 25 years, along with a link to the source. Your comments are simply a bunch of ad hominem attacks.
You are comparing a single quarter when the government shutdown completely for six weeks against periods when no similar things happened. How you think that is a valid comparison beggars belief. You are literally saying “gdp only grew 1.4%” with zero explanation or understanding of why, and it that why that matters, not the 1.4%
You also have not explained why you think 2.5% growth in consumption and investment is bad.
Non-essential portions of the government shut down for 6 weeks. The rest of the economy continued. Also, the extended shutdown in 2018 didn't exhibit the same impact on GDP growth. Your assertion that the lower growth is due to the shutdown requires justification other than you said so.
Are you arguing that the recent shutdowns are the reason that, in an entire year, we had 1.4% GDP growth and a total of 180k jobs created? This is abysmal awful data.
I do think that this sub can be somewhat dramatic about data, but this is not that instance. This is really really really bad data.
1.4% was the annualized change in Q4 vs Q3. The GDP growth for 2025 was 2.2%. The shutdown reduced Q4 growth by 1%.
Please at least get the numbers correct before coming at me.
It’s also a bad idea to look at any single quarter in isolation, especially when unusual events happen. If you recall, US GDP contracted in Q1 last year, entirely because there was a huge front running of imports ahead of Trump tariffs. That factor completely reversed in Q2. The result is that neither headline GDP number was particularly useful. The same thing applies in this latest quarter. The parts that matter most, consumption and investment, were both absolutely fine.
So I've read a few articles about this. I am struggling to figure out how much inflation/consumer spending was a factor here? Like high or low? Because everyone seems to emphasize the shutdown but the media is bought and sold right now.
Government spending increases GDP or decreases it when there is a cut to spending, so the government shut down was a big hit. Government spending contributes around 17% of GDP in the US. Its contribution to GDP was roughly -1%.
Edit: I didnt add literally any editorialism to my explanation at all, not sure why people are being snarky and downvoting. I could have just pasted the link and told you to read, smh
Maybe post 2008 (2.3% average), but historically it is actually pretty low. Inflation had averaged 3.3% for the last ~100 years in the US. Last ~50 years has averaged 3.6%.
Inflation ended the year at 2.7% and now is 2.4%.
So yes, by just about every measure inflation is low.
He's somewhat right, a bit hyperbolic, but what it does show is very poor GDP and job growth with high income earners propping up the economy. This is a really really discouraging report.
Not entirely sure the consumer spending numbers are “pretty good”, if you dive into the numbers, the increase there is from increased consumption of health care and housing and insurance services. Technically an increase but I very much still hold to the idea it’s a result of demand-shifting from the tariffs.
It counts, the point is it's not sustainable, productivity-driven growth but rather a temporary boost to domestic consumption at the cost of reducing total consumption massively, making consumers lose out on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services.
Meaning tariffs steered would-be import dollars to domestic goods? How does that reduce consumption? (This is a sincere question, not a veiled argument.)
Domestic services, technically, not goods. There has been near-zero increase in consumption of domestic goods recently.
>How does that reduce consumption?
Because foreign goods and services are cheaper in real terms and/or have higher quality. That's why people buy them to begin with. Tariffs remove any cost advantage foreign goods have and force consumers to settle for the more expensive, less beneficial to them domestic goods and services.
This effect is easily illustrated if you look at the Econ 101 tariff graph. Total consumer surplus goes down while domestic producer surplus goes up a much smaller amount, with tariff implementation.
We’re winning! The US is winning! Biggest win of all time! You see we like to do it big in the US. Spending, tax cuts, class war (don’t let them fucks say otherwise), Epstein!!!!
The government shutdown is doing most of the heavy lifting here. Federal spending contracted 5.1% and subtracted roughly a full percentage point from growth. Back that out and you're at 2.4%, which is soft but not the disaster the headline suggests.
Not great to see the miss, but it's not hugely surprising. PCE remains sticky (0.1% above consensus). Should be noted that a significant portion of the GDP miss was due to Gov shutdown, per BEA: https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/gdp-advance-estimate-4th-quarter-and-year-2025
>Real GDP increased at an annual rate of 1.4 percent (0.4 percent at a quarterly rate 1) in the fourth quarter, reflecting increases in consumer spending and investment that were partly offset by decreases in government spending and exports. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased. [...]
>Due to a lapse in appropriations, some federal government agencies were closed, and some employees were furloughed from October 1 through November 12. The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified because they are embedded in the regular source data that underlie the estimates and cannot be separately identified. However, BEA did estimate the effects of a reduction in the labor services supplied by federal employees. BEA estimates that this reduction in services provided by the federal government subtracted about 1.0 percentage point from real GDP growth in the fourth quarter. Because furloughed federal employees received back pay, the shutdown had no impact on current-dollar federal compensation and was reflected as a temporary increase in the prices paid for federal employee compensation. For more information, an FAQ is available on BEA’s website.
So really, there's more to it than "people stopped spending" or "the economy is doomed."
Another huge concern is the what the fed is having to do with the repo market constantly now. Private credit is an albatross. It’s all mostly because of the big 7 and AI.
Except the impact on GDP is speculation at best. As stated in the BEA report itself:
“ The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified because they are embedded in the regular source data that underlie the estimates and cannot be separately identified.”
The callout and speculation of a full point is a guess. It’s as much as a guess as Trumps made up 2pts statement.
>The callout and speculation of a full point is a guess.
It's an estimation, there's a difference. They use data to make the calculations. It's not just one guy saying "I guess it kinda was negative...let's make it -1%." https://www.bea.gov/help/faq/1483
>However, one component of GDP for which the effects can be estimated is real federal government consumption expenditures, specifically, real federal government compensation.[2] Conceptually, real compensation measures labor input, such as hours worked by federal employees. The estimate of real compensation is based primarily on employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). During a government shutdown, federal workers are counted as “employed” in the BLS data if they eventually receive backpay, so these data would not reflect the reduction in services provided by the federal workforce. To account for the reduction in services, BEA adjusts real compensation based on an estimate of the reduction in hours worked, reflecting the number of employees furloughed and the number of furlough days.
Actually you need to read and comprehend. My quote (verbatim from the PR you provided) is that the GDP impact cannot be quantified. As in the GDP impact cannot be determined so anything they are proposing is by definition a guess.
What you’re quoting is their broad statement on an input into the GDP (not actual GDP) of the compensation rate paid to federal employees using an “estimate.” Merriam-Webster defines the use of the wrd “estimate” in this case to be “calculate” and a synonym for “estimate” in this context is: Guess. Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/estimate
Reading comprehension is important in this case. They are guessing a 1pt of GDP but by their own definition they can’t quantify and by the section you pointed out an input into GDP (not gdp) is an estimate or a guess.
Yeah, you're utterly clueless, I get it. I provide a FAQ link for laypeople, like yourself, and you go on to quote merriam webster. Which, by the way, are way more lenient in their methodology than the Oxford English Dictionary. I will provide the OED link (which I assume you do not have access to as you are undoubtedly a layperson): https://www.oed.com/dictionary/estimation_n?tab=meaning_and_use
>I speake not this in estimation, As what I thinke might be, but what I know Is ruminated, plotted, and set downe.
W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1 i. iii. 266
Citation for Estimate is below:
Oxford English Dictionary, “estimate (v.), sense 2,” https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5215180811.
Since this meaningless semantic comment you have been confused by is dealt with, we can now look at what actually matters.
No, the BEA does not guess. They, per the FAQ use "real federal government compensation" using from the data BLS as to estimate, not guess, the extent of impact a shutdown has had on the GDP. This has already been explained to you. This is data science.
I enjoy how you need to find an alternative dictionary to try and prove a point. As much as I enjoy watching you twist to try and defend your position. You have yet to acknowledge two simple facts:
1 - Your own PR has a technical note that again states the following: itself:
“ The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified because they are embedded in the regular source data that underlie the estimates and cannot be separately identified.”
Cannot be qualified means they can’t calculate the impact on the GDP therefore the 1% is a guess or estimate
2 - The section you keep trying to use is about an input into the calculation and not actually about the GDP calculation output. They also state it’s an estimate (or a guess) and it’s an input NOT the output out of the calculation which is “not quantifiable.”
So defend the this administration failing agenda and results if you wish but in the end you’re just guessing
> I enjoy how you need to find an alternative dictionary to try and prove a point.
Not an alternative. The most authoritative dictionary in the history of the English language.
It is hilarious that you argue semantics and get wrong the words quantified and qualified:
>The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified [...]
And
>Cannot be qualified means [...]
>The section you keep trying to use is about an input into the calculation and not actually about the GDP calculation output. They also state it’s an estimate (or a guess) and it’s an input NOT the output out of the calculation which is “not quantifiable.”
This is a very convoluted sentence and bears no real meaning. They cannot record data when they are furloughed, and such data sources are not readily available or recorded by standard at the BLS or BEA. They substitute this with the most closely related data source which is real federal government compensation. It is most closely correlated with what the data is actually, which is why the BEA use it. It is an estimate precisely because it uses indirect data sources in place of directly recorded data. This is still reliable, it is still accurate. It is also standard practice. See 2018-19 Shutdown FAQ: https://www.bea.gov/help/faq/1301
>To account for the reduction in government services that occurred over the fourth and first quarters, BEA will adjust the real federal government compensation estimates. The adjustment will be based on the number of federal employees furloughed and the number of furlough days. Of the approximately 800,000 employees of the federal agencies without appropriations, roughly 340,000 were furloughed, and the remaining 460,000 employees were “excepted,” meaning they were required to work even though they could not be paid until funding was restored.3 Excepted jobs are often related to the protection of life or property (the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration have large numbers of excepted employees). Over the course of the shutdown, the number of “excepted” employees changed, such as when IRS employees were recalled to work in mid-January. The output of all federal employees who worked during the shutdown will be included in BEA’s estimates of 2018q4 and 2019q1 real federal government compensation.
Now, back to the stupidity:
>So defend the this administration failing agenda
Ignoring the obvious error in your comment "defend the this", I will respond. I abhor the morons in charge, as do the many people I know who work in think tanks for economic policy. We, as professionals, know their policies are economically stupid.
This does not mean that figures from the BLS / BEA / [Insert Statistical Agency] are inaccurate, untrustworthy, or any other synonyms you prefer. It is accurate, follows a transparent methodology, and is available to the public. Now, restating what the BEA themselves have done is not a defense or an attack on anybody. It is a statement of fact: "The BLS used X method to find Y."
You are not a serious person. You dislike data science, you seem to prefer feelings and semantic arguments over the meanings of words, rather than what the data tells us. Take Econ 101 and come back when you have learned something.
I’ve heard the argument that tariffs in the last year made GDP growth “look” higher than it actually was. With the Supreme Court revision, could we possibly envision quarterly gdp decline sometime this year?
I personally suspect there have been a lot of deflationary pressures under the radar since late 2024 that the tariffs and BLS inaccuracies have masked. Is there any merit to what I laid out above?
Just a reminder to not take those GDPNow projections as gospel as some are inclined to do when it pushes a narrative. They had it over 5% at one point and it dropped sharply to 3% in the last few days. Still off.
[OP] Barnyard_Rich | a day ago
Also of note:
>The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy, rose 3% in December, according to a separate release. That matched the consensus forecast but kept the pivotal inflation measure well above the Fed’s 2% target.
tryexceptifnot1try | a day ago
That's a near total disaster of a report. That inflation number is about to jump even more as the RAM shortage flows through the supply chain. This and the jobs revision basically confirm that we're in full blown stagflation
RealisticForYou | a day ago
I hear the 2nd half of the year, the price of electronics will take a big jump. It’s estimated that the iPhone, alone, will increase by $150 bucks.
lqIpI | a day ago
It could be more than that. The largest effect is going to come from all 'budget' brands essentially going out of business because their model doesn't work with these DRAM and NAND shortages/prices.
For the next ~5 years, those who have resources will be dictating pricing....unless demand takes a dive
wheatgivesmeshits | a day ago
Demand will dive, we'll be too busy trying not to starve to worry about buying electronics.
SgtBaxter | a day ago
Demand will only increase, supplies are sold out through 2028 already.
It’s not you or I driving the demand, it’s data companies.
DrDrago-4 | a day ago
Data companies need customers.. of course we still control demand.
Their model assumes customers for that hardware. Thats not a given, especially because theyre essentially relying on the rest of the corporate world to be their main customers.
We already see many companies cutting back, warning of slowing sales, etc. Give it a few months, hiring freezes / layoffs & no more optional expenses like AI data center spending. Then that filters up to the datacenters who have unused hardware they likely bought using loans with interest on them (so they cant wait forever for the demand to show up).
Then it crashes from there, if theres a glut of unused data center capacity they have to stop buying it.. or wont be able to fulfill the full contract
The house of cards of borrowing ultimately relies on demand being very high, or it becomes a real domino effect. One company has a glut of hardware / not enough demand, makes less money, they dont enter into a new contract because they cant, and the money stops flowing around that loop..
LowerMiddleClassMan | a day ago
Is this fucking r/economics or another doomer sub ffs
ILearnedTheHardaway | a day ago
Me when economic news isn’t sunshine and rainbows
heresyforfunnprofit | a day ago
There’s a bit of overlap given the current situation.
LowerMiddleClassMan | a day ago
There is ABSOLUTELY no overlap. The government was shut down for 43 days and probably halved the GDP growth.
This is doomed and perma online people using this as an opportunity to doom and feel correct before more CPI and GDP reports release that are solid like they have been all of 2025 except this one.
Y’all are not economists, you’re r/politic subscribers roleplaying as people who care about the economy and stock market
Bazoobs1 | a day ago
We all know how that game goes, sadly.
Prestigious-Smoke511 | a day ago
Reddit: Everyone will be FORCED to purchase LUXURY electronics even though they don't have JOBS because no one can afford to buy ANYTHING, so everyone will have to work EVEN MORE jobs for LESS PAY!
You guys can't even keep straight what the disaster of the hour is. If the price of the iphone goes up $150 don't buy one. If computers get more expensive, keep the dang one you have for longer.
The world is not ending.
TenderfootGungi | 23 hours ago
How old of of phone could budget brands actually recycle the ram from?
tryexceptifnot1try | a day ago
I think this is going to cause the AI bubble to pop. RAM prices at this level is an actual national security threat considering how integrated it is into everything we do. This feels like the end of the post GFC boom.
Straight_Document_89 | a day ago
Nah this admin loves ai hyperscalers for some reason. They won’t think ram is a real national security issue. They’re idiotic as well.
AntiBoATX | a day ago
What does that have to do with actual supply
Straight_Document_89 | a day ago
I’m saying they aren’t going to give a shit. If they did they would pause this AI shit and get to work.
UnderwordBroker | a day ago
I mean, I hear what you're saying, but the fire burns when it's out of fuel. Once we literally run out of this shit, and we are currently experiencing pretty heavy shortages, how do you scale everything up?
TheRealBananaWolf | 14 hours ago
I guess it would require consolidation of companies. Maybe like the streaming services did when they got bought out by the more successful ones
acrudepizza | a day ago
It does not matter what this admin loves
between ram and data storage, these items are connected will every single aspect of the economy that consumers interact with and they have all been hoovered up by a few hyperscalers.
I expect the backlash to be massive and fierce.
Straight_Document_89 | a day ago
I hope the backlash is massive man! There’s more important things besides using chips and ram for ai data centers.
Retired-Yam8988 | a day ago
Like they even understand any of this - Trump just wants tech execs to cradle his balls once in a while and somehow profit off of whatever is going on. He’ll find a way to pour billions more into data centers and make sure his kids profit from something in the whole process.
mundza | 17 hours ago
You’re also expecting them to understand supply chain concepts. They are still learning to read, you need to adjust your expectations.
zombawombacomba | a day ago
Our president has already sold us out to the AI overlords. Not a chance this happens. We are all more likely to live on the streets than this changing.
Contren | a day ago
Storage as well is absolutely fucked. Anyone trying to build any sort of compute infrastructure is getting bent over a barrel.
HorsieJuice | a day ago
lol wut? Even if ram costs explode, they’re still a tiny fraction of what it costs to employ people. Annual COL raises are more expensive.
cradleu | 15 hours ago
The issue isn’t price exactly, it’s that RAM is hard to produce and takes years to scale up production for. We are literally running out of ram with supply orders backed up for years already
Mundane-Charge-1900 | a day ago
If you think this is full blown stagflation, just wait. Unemployment is still somehow under 5%, inflation 3%, interest rates still low by historical standards.
notaredditer13 | a day ago
Yeah, these numbers are nowhere close to stagflation, lol.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 23 hours ago
A lot of people in this sub have been on a roll calling basically everything stagflation, when you see it used on /r/economics it more or less has no meaning.
There's some divergent risks going on right now, but ultimately the supply constraints in tariffs are never going to be sufficient enough to create enduring stagflationary conditions if we see a noteworthy drop in demand. It's just not possible, you need a massive supply shock - and tariffs aren't that.
Background_Baker9021 | 19 hours ago
I personally think the numbers that are coming out have been cooked, myself. Just a gut feeling after the way things have gone the past year.
Mundane-Charge-1900 | 19 hours ago
Perhaps but they are not cooking late 70s/early 80s numbers like 1980’s 14% inflation, 7% unemployment, 15% mortgage rates.
Background_Baker9021 | 6 hours ago
True. I was a kid and remember that, it impacted my parents pretty hard. They did a good job keeping ke from noticing until I was older and then realized what was going on.
Jolly_Platypus6378 | a day ago
No but GDP 1.4% and inflation 3%…. In real terms, the economy shrank 1.6%.
eddiecai64 | a day ago
GDP numbers are always inflation-adjusted
Dismal-Bee-8319 | a day ago
You’re in r/economics mate. Can’t make a mistake like this and not get caught.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 23 hours ago
TBF, this sub is littered with mistakes like that with nobody correcting it lol.
arah91 | a day ago
I did all my electronic purchasing last year, as I figured Trump tariffs would trash the economy and make everything super expensive. Glad I did, spend 300 $ on hard drives last year, that would be a 800 $ purchase today.
Capt-Crap1corn | a day ago
Do you think this will affect the used market? For example, I buy music equipment. I won't be buying anything new, just used. I wonder if the downward pressure will raise prices among the used market.
arah91 | a day ago
For sure, as new stuff gets more and more expensive, and some of it won't even make it into the country. People will have to buy used stuff just to complete whatever they are working on.
I think you can make this a little better, by buying on facebook market place and the like where people might not know, or are just trying to offload older stuff without throwing it away, compared to site like ebay where prices tend to be more dynamic.
Capt-Crap1corn | a day ago
Facebook marketplace is starting to scare me. I'm seeing people selling stuff and their reasoning is to pay bills. I've never seen it so frankly put, but it's been like that as of late.
Sorry for the tangent. Good point. I'm definitely going to check marketplace.
gingerzombie2 | 18 hours ago
It makes sense, just like the price surge we saw in used cars a while back
Background_Baker9021 | 19 hours ago
Yes. I bought 4x12tb used data center hdds for $89 per drive from goharddrives. The prices for used drives like this (if they are even available) is ridiculous.. up like 3x in price... used, as I said.
Cudi_buddy | a day ago
God. Fuck AI. Just a total net negative
SuccotashOther277 | a day ago
Right. It is useful for some things and I get how it can be a tool but shoehorning it everywhere is disastrous. Humans can do a lot of this and use far fewer resources in the process. Use AI for running traffic lights and stuff
reap3rx | a day ago
If AI even had a shot at accomplishing the goals it tried to sell to us in the beginning, like curing cancer and genetic diseases, then maybe some of the investment would be worth it. But all it's being used for is to increase the unemployment line and create deep fakes, child porn and other dystopian outcomes.
Petrichordates | a day ago
AI is absolutely contributing to research on cancer and genetic diseases..
Did we already forget about Alphafold?
reap3rx | a day ago
That's not even close to the main focus of AI and you know it. Yes, everyone forgot about alphafold because it's not what 99% of the AI funding and power is going towards. Besides we will all die from the other malefactors born of the AI industry before Alphafold cures cancer.
Petrichordates | 20 hours ago
Your comment didnt say anything about it being the main focus, and I don't see how that's even relevant. Computers weren't created to further cancer research, but obviously they're critical to it.
TheEagleDied | 3 hours ago
It’s ok to admit you made a mistake.
reap3rx | 3 hours ago
But I didn't.
TheEagleDied | 3 hours ago
What do you think something that helps solves protein folding accomplishes?
kananishino | a day ago
Growing pains
persianx6_ | a day ago
Yeah. It’s pretty crazy right? I’m glad we have competent leade — oh what’s that? The president is suing the IRS to get 10 billion and just announced yesterday the US will pay him 10 billion for joining the Gaza peace conference? K.
Lumpylarry | a day ago
Deficit spending solves inflation. Right?
MoreOfAnOvalJerk | a day ago
It's a good thing we have our fearless leader who helped snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
MC_Fap_Commander | a day ago
SCOTUS just handed this Administration a massive economic lifeline (even though I'm sure he'll see it as a "loss" lol).
Retired-Yam8988 | a day ago
So this is what all the winning feels like
gingerzombie2 | 18 hours ago
He did say we would be winning so much we would be sick of winning. I am sick of whatever this is.
OrangeJr36 | a day ago
There have been warning signs in the previous two quarters, contrary to headline readers who swore up and down that "they" (never really made clear who) must have been cooking the books to make them look so good.
The Economy is lukewarm and has been for about two years now, the people trying to find a conspiracy in that or the administration trying to take a victory lap because of a good reading here and there are both wrong.
ballmermurland | a day ago
You'd think AI/Trump forcing the release of the PS6 back a year would be enough for these manosphere chuds to turn on him.
Illblood | a day ago
I’m tired of all this winning, boss
shryke12 | a day ago
Lol not at all. This GDP reflects a record government shutdown and the import numbers were skewed because of massive front loaded chip buying from TSMC. Consumer spending was resilient and manufacturing had a great January rebound. I don't think this report is a doomsday prophecy.
oooshi | a day ago
“consumer spending” - have you not been keeping track of the “k shaped” economy phenomenon weve been experiencing? thats not what i would consider resilient consumer spending.
shryke12 | a day ago
Your feelings and reddit propaganda do not change the data in the report.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | a day ago
Consumer spending was pretty strong in the Q4 report
Evilbred | a day ago
I wonder if JPow will drop a rate hike before he drops the mic.
Nwcray | a day ago
Nah- rate drops are the exact opposite of what’s needed now. Steady as she goes, or even some minor rate increases are appropriate.
J Pow wants to be the guy who engineered the soft landing, not the punching bag for the next guy. He isn’t going to make any intentionally bad decisions on his way out.
classicronnie | a day ago
He said rate hike not drop
Nwcray | a day ago
D’oh! My bad
rvasko3 | a day ago
"I've won affordability."
- Donald J. Trump, 2/19/26 in Rome, Georgia
cradleu | 15 hours ago
When in Rome
vasquca1 | a day ago
Is this the winning Trump is touting 😂
Nervous-Lock7503 | a day ago
But what happened to the GDP? I thought the AI data centers are booming?
Working-Welder-792 | a day ago
The DOW!
Ok_Addition_356 | a day ago
They're all money-sinks.
slo1111 | a day ago
There you have it. This weird economic model that seemingly prior reasonable men have flipped to support with open arms gave us a real barn burner of 2.2% growth, a decline from Biden's last year.
This is what happens when people ignore and even promote the bold face lie that importing companies don't pay the tariffs and that is just one of the asinine policies of this admin.
Fun_Struggle8856 | a day ago
In the UK we would kill for 2.2% growth lol
Kromgar | a day ago
Not enough for americans. We need more growth to afford warhammer 40k from the uk
someonehasmygamertag | a day ago
If you bought more Warhammer then we'd have our 2.2%
meursaultxxii | a day ago
Has GW considered maybe Warhammer 35k?
padizzledonk | a day ago
Id be happy to afford Warhammer 8.50
Kromgar | a day ago
They already have 30k
Babelfiisk | a day ago
Which is somehow more expensive.
Rarvyn | a day ago
More like $3.50
alltehmemes | a day ago
With the exchange rate, the US is looking at 53.87K + tariffs.
CursedNobleman | a day ago
I just want a warhammer 401k.
hey-coffee-eyes | a day ago
I'm still trying to paint all my Tyranids I bought two years ago, I can't buy any more right now!
10ve2Cit | a day ago
If you aren't juggling 3 unpainted armies are you even doing it right?
Babelfiisk | a day ago
Cries in Imperial Guard.
dahayden | 22 hours ago
Love seeing 40k comments on an economics reddit.
10ve2Cit | a day ago
When will politicians deliver an economy that works for me?
ohhhbooyy | a day ago
I recall a time when we complained about our addiction to short term gains and quarterly profits and not consider anything long term.
Now apparently on Reddit if decades long problems don’t get fix by tomorrow we are doomed.
meatyvagin | a day ago
When someone says they will fix a problem in a day and the problem is still around a year later people are right to complain about the person who made the promise.
NF11nathan | a day ago
Pretty much society as a whole these days.
Kromgar | a day ago
I was making a joke
SaurusSawUs | a day ago
That's not 2.2% real GDP per capita though. Controlled for +0.5% population growth which was measured at midyear, real GDP per capita probably +1.6%.
That's not a break from +1.8% real per capita for the US from 2024 on 2023. But it is slowing down.
Compared to a UK and Japan
Japan : +1.1% real, controlled for -0.5% population growth, real GDP per capita probably +1.6%. A big step up from +0.5% in 2024 on 2023.
United Kingdom: +1.3% real, controlled for +0.3% population growth, real GDP per capita probably +1% (ONS has published this estimate here ). Still weak compared to 1980-2008 trend but a big step up from basically 0% for 2024 on 2023. Slightly stronger growth combined with much lower estimated net migration.
Estimates for Japan and UK are probably more solid (gov and large newspaper sources published recently), though may be revised.
Canada and Eurozone are probably around +1.3% per head, which is particularly a step up from -1.5% in 2024 for Canada. (Canada is estimated to have seen +1.3% GDP with no population growth after a reversal on their migration policies, which can only mean an increase per head).
I don't expect this narrowing of the US GDP per head growth lead to get as much play in the British press as the post-Brexit and post-Russian Invasion widening of the US lead.
watusiwatusi | a day ago
Have you considered dumping trillions into graphics cards?
slo1111 | a day ago
They made that choice when their protection scheme was just the pull out method
padizzledonk | a day ago
Just start spending trillions on server farms, problem solved
CountMordrek | a day ago
2.2% growth in USD. USD is down 6.63% over the last year.
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
You don’t subtract movement in currency exchange rates from GDP.
TheNewOP | a day ago
You do if you're horribly uneducated in economics
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
People say this constantly online right now. About the stock market too.
TheNewOP | a day ago
Yeah I know, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. It's pretty much always international investors saying that. They say it under US domestic economic news, which has little to nothing to do with the forex risk they got hit by. I've corrected 4-5 people but got tired of doing it.
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
To me it feels more like US people who just cast around for a reason why good news isn’t actually good news.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 23 hours ago
It's so bad, almost nobody on this sub seems to understand what on earth DXY is or what it means, they're just out here doing all sorts of random math. "well, DXY is down 10%, so my cheeseburger costs 10% more automatically" type logic lol.
Did you get paid the same this month? Did the cost of the cheeseburger in the currency you are paid in change? The no, the movement in DXY is not relevant for any of this lol.
AccomplishedLeek1329 | a day ago
have you compared the fiscal deficit to gdp ratios?
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 23 hours ago
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S
hot_to_trotsky666 | a day ago
You could try joining the European union next door 🤡
Murder is absolutely not necessary
I_Am_Dwight_Snoot | a day ago
In a vacuum sure but you don't want this with the baggage.
We should be definitely higher with these tax breaks but tariffs and dumb policy is killing the economy. It's also pretty bad because our deficit is growing and people are getting in more debt. A monkeys paw for 2.2% growth lol
DianedePoiters | a day ago
Don’t worry the 2.2% is likely a lie, they will revise it downwards in 6 months.
bittersterling | a day ago
Japans enters the chat and begins to sob.
Swimming-Tax-6087 | a day ago
I think the thrust of it is that the global economic machine is very large and moves slowly. It wasn’t an if but a when.
insertwittynamethere | a day ago
Are you implying that nothing in the last year had a direct impact on this consequence?
Swimming-Tax-6087 | a day ago
The opposite. People kept being surprised that they didn’t see an immediate impact in the numbers.
Any-Progress- | a day ago
These are very immediate numbers for the economy. Most government policies don’t take a growing economy to a mostly stalled one in less than a year. Much of the benefits from the infrastructure bill Biden passed didn’t even kick in until around now (but trump cancelled many of them when he would likely get the credit)
Miserable_Aspect_749 | a day ago
It is but it's not what most Americans THINK will happen. Most think it happens almost literally overnight. There have been a lot of comments on this very sub by people were surprised by this.
insertwittynamethere | 15 hours ago
If he had kept the tariffs he was planning to impose in June of last year, it would've been much more readily apparent for prices in the economy. I had vendors telling me they were going up 20-25% in June because of them, only to dial back to 7.25% in the end.
And this is me being in manufacturing and negotiating inputs for use in assembled final products. So, you can imagine the knock-on effects of that.
That being said, even after the news Friday from SCOTUS, all steel and aluminum are still subject to tariffs under Section 301 and 231, meaning 25% and 50% tariff rates (I can't recall which is at 25 and which 50% atm like I should), so there are still significant costs built into every product using steel or aluminum in the US today by default from tariffs imposed by the admin.
I have to assume at this time that the K-shaped economy we must certainly live in now, and I do make products that are considered luxury goods that is buoyed by the k-shape economy, is really doing the work in masking the pain and impact of these tariffs on every day Americans and the corresponding economic activity that is reported being reflective of that.
ass_pineapples | a day ago
We've flown off the motorcycle but we're still going at 80 mph, the asphalt is getting closer and closer, though.
Typhus_black | a day ago
Can’t wait to see the eventual economic meat crayon. I’m sure it will be a hoot.
insertwittynamethere | 15 hours ago
Ah, my apologies for my confusion. It appeared as if you were implying that this was happening anyways even from Biden, and that Trump and his policies had 0 to do with where we are today.
I think the comment chain led me to infer something otherwise from your comment by the time I got to it.
There are a lot of bad-faith attempts to wave away poor economic numbers the entire time Trump has been in office once again, so it's hard to always pick up when that's not the case nowadays.
Lopsided-Ticket3813 | a day ago
Yes but this is also a known factor there is like a 9-15 month lag between adjusting fiscal policy and its effects propagating through the economy.
We are 1 month away from "liberation day" so everything is moving on schedule
acemedic | a day ago
While China’s GDP grew at a rate of 5% YOY for 2025 after we “pwned” them by slapping insane tariffs on them.
Next “logical” argument from the far right is “but do you trust those numbers???”
Sure do. Almost every metric that can be tracked externally is off the charts. Shipping container traffic, export $ volume, etc is posting double digit gains. The message to read between the lines though is they must have turned around to the world and said “we’ll sell these items to you for 10% off.” Which worked out for them… they’ve been building the distribution chain for their products since 2014 and have been waiting for the big red handle to pull to execute on disengaging from the US’s trade. We were only 15.4% of their exports in 2024 anyways.
Their next move is going to be to flip all of these countries to use the Renminbi as their trading currency and reserve. China is already the primary trading partner with >50% of the countries in the world, and those countries are going to be negatively impacted by staying on the USD while it’s in decline. The BRICS nations comprise 1/4th of the world trade and 1/2 of the world’s population. Trump already knows this is coming and is terrified of it, indicated by his TS post the last time they met saying he would enact a 100% tariff on any country that agreed to use the renminbi as their reserve. Since there was no other plan put in place after that statement, this isn’t preventing it from happening, it’s giving our economic adversaries more time to plan ahead for the moment they flip. We’re absolutely in a trade war, but we’re not using any real tools to affect our adversaries, we’re just pushing self inflicting damage while Trump simultaneously props up regimes that are failing with the policies he’d really like to enact.
lqIpI | a day ago
>bold face lie that importing companies don't pay the tariffs
Would it be better if we replaced that revenue with a corporate tax increase? Then we know for sure American companies and American companies alone are footing the bill.
Liquid_Sarcasm | a day ago
So you are alright with the intentional lies? The ends justify the means…
gochisox2005 | a day ago
Of course
devliegende | a day ago
VAT would be better
cradleu | 15 hours ago
LVT would be best
devliegende | 11 hours ago
Property tax is already common and high in the USA. Federal on top of that will make it probitive in many places and speed up gentrification in cities
cradleu | 9 hours ago
The assumption for LVT is that it would replace property taxes
devliegende | 8 hours ago
Which entity is this assumption about? State and local governments would hardly replace existing property taxes with something nearly identical and the Federal government doesn't have constitutional authority to do so.
iHasABaseball | a day ago
Hello the internet exists and I will share it with you for free.
Economic Inefficiency & GDP Loss: Tariffs are considered highly inefficient; studies indicate they can reduce GDP and wages by more than twice as much as a corporate tax increase that raises the same amount of revenue.
Consumer Impact (Inflation): Tariffs often act as a hidden sales tax, leading to higher consumer prices for goods (electronics, clothing, food). In contrast, corporate taxes are paid out of profits, which may or may not be passed to consumers, but generally act more slowly on consumer prices.
Profitability vs. Revenue: Tariffs are paid regardless of whether a company is profitable or taking a loss, making them riskier for struggling businesses. Corporate taxes are only paid on profit.
Retaliation: Tariffs frequently trigger retaliatory tariffs from other countries, harming exporters (e.g., agriculture), a consequence not typically associated with corporate tax hikes.
Supply Chain Disruption: Tariffs create uncertainty that disrupts global supply chains, making companies hesitant to invest, whereas corporate tax increases affect the net return on investment directly.
Tariffs have their place when used narrowly and in targeted ways, not as some broad sweeping threat tactic toward the whole globe.
Babymicrowavable | a day ago
Yes, and a wealth tax, and a capital gains tax
QuickAltTab | a day ago
I don't think we need corporate taxes at all if we sufficiently progressively tax income and capital gains, and ensure billionaires can't hide from it
I_Am_Dwight_Snoot | a day ago
He should have never lowered it to begin with.
The_Keg | a day ago
>You have it backwards. If you steal an election, you can deny your opponent adequate secret service, then let 5.56 fly through their ears (if they get lucky)
>Requiring photo ID means the entire Democratic Party needs to be re-invented. Fake headlines won't do it. Kamala's whopping 8 electoral votes from states requiring photo ID aren't gonna cut it.
daily reminder that right wing populists exist on this sub too. Funny how their economic policies seem to mirror the left huh?
slo1111 | a day ago
Fact 1: Bigly big deficit Fact 2: tariffs have not protected industry, increased manufacturing, or opened new markets.
So yes, we need to raise taxes and spread it across the economy rather than only targeting importers unless your plan is to march us straight to a debt load 200% of our GDP.
You debt people are going to decline the standard of living in this country
LimpDisc | a day ago
So the unemployment numbers will be increasing by at least 1 individual after this report? There's no way this administration doesn't look at those responsible for this report and look at removing them somehow. What a mess.
mkt853 | a day ago
They already want to punish the NY Fed for putting out a report that shows 90% of tariffs are paid for by the consumer. I guess Hassett didn't see the handful of others issued prior by the likes of GS for example that basically had the same number, but as we all know Goldman is known for hiring people that can't pass a "first year econ class" as Hassett put it.
padizzledonk | a day ago
>They already want to punish the NY Fed for putting out a report that shows 90%
Which is good but....Fucking duh? Of course theyre being paid by consumers, thats how tariffs work lol
When i saw that headline it was like reading "National Weather Service report confirms ice is slippery"
Cudi_buddy | a day ago
The average person didn’t even know what a tariff was before trump. Let’s be honest.
raynorelyp | a day ago
To be fair, people on Reddit are heavily misrepresenting what both sides mean in this. Saying the exporter pays the tariffs means they lower the cost so the total amount to the importer is the same. Saying the importer pays the tariff means the exporter didn’t lower costs by more than the tariff so that the total cost to the importer goes up. Technically importers pay 100% of tariffs, but the definition above is what people generally mean because it makes more sense to model it that way.
Trill-I-Am | a day ago
You are badly underestimating how many people think tariffs are directly billed to exporters by the government
raynorelyp | a day ago
They might be wrong technically, but they’re effectively right. When a tax is put on something, it increases the total cost. In effect, there’s no difference between the importer and exporter paying it. The total cost gets paid. The tax comes out of it.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 23 hours ago
Yes and no, in a given transaction you're right that assigning the "cost" to one party or the other is generally a matter of semantics.
But we can utilize data and studies to see who's absorbing that cost - IE are manufacturers cutting prices? Is volume dropping? Are consumers purchasing the same amount and paying more? Through this we can approximate how much of a given tax is being absorbed by one party or the other.
In this case, we have this: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is-paying-for-the-2025-u-s-tariffs/
And this: https://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Dateiverwaltung/IfW-Publications/fis-import/92fb3f30-07b8-4dcf-b2bc-fbefb831f1a1-KPB201_EN.pdf
Both finding that US consumers are generally absorbing around 90% of total tariff burden.
raynorelyp | 23 hours ago
I completely agree with everything you said. The problem is people seem to be making a big deal out of the “who is directly paying it” rather than “who is effectively paying it.” Your last part is relevant because it says consumers are absorbing the costs but people the amount of people focusing on the technical part is what bothers me. My go to example is Nintendo. When the Switch 2 came out, Nintendo announced they’d eat the cost and that’s what they did. But then people still tried to act like the people buying the Switch 2 were eating the cost.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 23 hours ago
> The problem is people seem to be making a big deal out of the “who is directly paying it” rather than “who is effectively paying it.”
Well yeah, online there's always going to be some contingent of person who's less concerned with reality and more concerned with narrative construction. With something like this it's not worth trying to help them, like my boi J cole said - they don't wanna be saved.
Petrichordates | a day ago
All of that is pure nonsense.
People belived other countries paid the tariffs because that's what trump said.
raynorelyp | 23 hours ago
Because in effect, they partly did. This isn’t just my wording. Exporters used the same language. They either “ate the tariff” or “passed it on” to the consumer.
padizzledonk | a day ago
>To be fair, people on Reddit are heavily misrepresenting what both sides mean in this. Saying the exporter pays the tariffs means they lower the cost so the total amount to the importer is the same. Saying the importer pays the tariff means the exporter didn’t lower costs by more than the tariff so that the total cost to the importer goes up. Technically importers pay 100% of tariffs, but the definition above is what people generally mean because it makes more sense to model it that way.
I get what youre saying and all but youve put the brakes on at stop 1 of like a 4 stop train. Yes, the importer pays the tariffs --which is arguably already at "Americans pay the tariffs" but the importer doesnt just eat that cost and lose money or make less (or they may depending on how their contracts are set up but even then they wont do that forever, as soon as the next contract comes up theyre done eating that cost and theyre passing it on), they just pass it on to the wholesaler who passes it on to the retailer who passes it on to the consumer
raynorelyp | a day ago
You’re not wrong, but you’re also not factoring in price elasticity (or lack of)
padizzledonk | a day ago
Agreed, but the report kind of confirmed my priors that there was no way corporations were going to "eat" these tariffs
That 10% we didnt pay for was probably due entirely to contract issues, i.e people with poorly executed contracts like that lady in the very beginning of this shit that was on the news that she had just signed a deal with Walmart at X price to supply her baby stuff and the tariffs made that impossible to do and there was no way for her to alter the terms
Which, imo, as a small business owner myself is simply inexcusable....How the fuck do you sign a deal without contingencies in it for cost overruns you arent responsible for.....ESPECIALLY after going through Covid just a couple years ago......I had 1 project i ate shit on due to a 25k dollar price increase on materials (im a remodel gc) because of the lumber supply shortage with covid, after that happened i called my lawyer and added a TON of language to protect myself from that ever happening again in the future, and it did, and im not the one that ate that cost increase
raynorelyp | 23 hours ago
The Nintendo Switch 2 is a good example of a company that ate most of the tariff. They knew there’s only so much people would be willing to pay for a videogame console. They talked about it a lot. Granted they’re now prepping to increase costs to pass it on to the consumer, but for about a year now much of it was Nintendo eating the cost.
talino2321 | a day ago
More like gave them a stern dressing down. Because they can't unring that bell.
Evilbred | a day ago
They'll fire the guy that compiled these stats.
FidgetyHerbalism | 17 hours ago
I have read this comment after literally every optically bad economic report since August last year and it hasn't eventuated.
The only head of an economic department that has been fired so far is Erika McEntarfer, who was fired over significant downwards revisions to the jobs numbers; revisions which Reddit simultaneously seems to believe (after the recent annual benchmarking) are legitimately signs of terrible initial estimates.
SithSidious | a day ago
No because they managed to blame the government shutdown for 1%, and if you recall they said that was the democrats fault.
pussycatlolz | a day ago
No this is Biden's economy, unless you're asking about the Dow
crabsonfire | a day ago
I thought according to this site the administration was fudging all the numbers?? But when bad numbers come out all of a sudden everybody trusts those.
Miserable_Aspect_749 | a day ago
But the Dow is over 50,000!
Fuddle | a day ago
Jesus, and these are likely the "juiced" numbers! Ouch.
ValdezX3R0 | a day ago
I don't see how the market thinks we're getting 2 rate cuts this year with the data coming in. 180k jobs for the entire year is dire. Unless the Fed prioritizes employment and lets inflation go higher. Economy really seems like it's on the edge of the abyss.
Fringelunaticman | a day ago
Fed has a dual mandate. Inflation and unemployment. They may well prioritize employment over Inflation.
ValdezX3R0 | a day ago
Yep but where does the Fed draw the line? Inflation at roughly 3% already. Lower rates and let it go to 4-5%? A looming recession with already low rates and high inflation and we're fucked.
NavyDean | a day ago
They won't cut for employment because they've already stated prior cuts didn't promote jobs, the cuts just promoted more spending into AI infrastructure and 100% of the GDP growth is AI infrastructure.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
> They won't cut for employment because they've already stated prior cuts didn't promote jobs
Where on earth did anyone at the Fed say that?
Everyday_ImSchefflen | a day ago
They didn't. It's the classic Reddit make shit up and no one fact checks
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
It's just wild how often people on this sub will openly lie and everyone just eats that shit up lol. This place is as bad as the conservative subs when it comes to rampant disinformation.
Everyday_ImSchefflen | a day ago
I say that all the time, even as someone who is firmly on the left.
People are people, they look for info that supports their biases whether they are liberal or conservative.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
What's more wild, is you get people like the guy below who are so obsessed with their preconceived notions that you can spell out for them how they're incorrect and they just won't come to terms with that.
Scrandon | a day ago
No, not even close. You could have just googled it rather than going on this non-sense diatribe.
https://www.google.com/search?q=powell+states+rate+cut+wont+help+job+growth&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
>In late 2025, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested that further interest rate cuts might not be the primary solution for the softening U.S. labor market, as job growth deceleration was driven by structural factors like decreased worker demand rather than high interest rates. While the Fed implemented cuts to address risks, Powell signaled that rate changes may not effectively boost employment under current conditions.
Everyday_ImSchefflen | a day ago
Even that isn't close to what you originally said Jerome stated
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
Not only is it not close, as I've outlined below it's a whole bastardization of what Powell actually said. OP quickly jumped to insults because they're unable to support their claims with information, typical MAGA shit.
It's just another example of how people who are completely clueless but super confident dominate the conversation here. Below the dude didn't even understand that cutting rates stimulates demand. Like, why some of these people think they've got the intellectual chops to start arguments like this is beyond me.
Scrandon | a day ago
>Below the dude didn't even understand that cutting rates stimulates demand.
Not true. I never said that. I would never say that. Just another example of you completely failing to read carefully. You should go back and re-read this exchange and see how many things you misunderstood.
I never said rate cuts don’t stimulate demand
You jumped to insults first in your first response to me and I responded in a pretty level-headed way.
You incorrectly think I’m MAGA due to poor reading comprehension
You didn’t even notice that a quote from Powell that you yourself pasted proves you wrong.
Scrandon | a day ago
First of all, I am a totally different person, you need to pay attention to usernames, ok? Second, how is this:
>Powell signaled that rate changes may not effectively boost employment under current conditions.
”Not close” to this:
>They won't cut for employment because they've already stated prior cuts didn't promote jobs
Everyday_ImSchefflen | a day ago
We got an angry elf here.
They said it might not be the 'primary solution'. And then said nothing about AI, investment in AI, etc.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
See, this is always going to be the defining line between people like me and people like you who exist in a world of disinformation. And I mean, it's not your fault really, it is in a sense, but like I understand how you get there. Your "source" is an AI aggregation of forbes and investopedia articles written in the most dumbed down hyperbolic fashion possible. My source was having read these transcripts and speeches when they happened.
So what happens here is Powell (or anyone) makes a long form nuanced statement, someone at Investopedia realizes that most laymen are too stupid and/or lazy to read that, so they pull some snippets and write something clickbait for views. Then, the AI scrapes all that clickbait and presents a very matter of fact statement back to you, that statement is twice removed from the original one, and based on intentional clickbait.
So anyway, the listed sources there are all articles based on either the September or October press releases. You can just read those in full here:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20250917.pdf
https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20251029.pdf
From September:
>However, the layoff rate is also very low. So you’ve got a low—a low-firing, low-hiring environment. And the concern is that if you start to see layoffs, the people who are laid off won’t—there won’t be a lot of hiring going on. So that could very quickly flow into higher unemployment. In a healthier economy, healthier labor market, there would be jobs for those people. But now the hiring rate is very, very low. So that’s been a growing concern over the last few months, and it’s one of the reasons why we think it’s appropriate that we begin to shift our policy focus toward a more balanced one.
Which is spelling out that cutting rates more of a priority given the labor market, IE the opposite of what you and the above poster suggested.
And this from October:
> In addition, labor demand has declined, and so the labor—the unemployment rate has gone down, meaning that demand for workers has gone down a little more than supply. So that’s what’s going on, and—but it is mostly a supply function. It’s mostly a function of the change in supply, I think and many people think. So the question then is, what does—what does our tool do, which supports demand? And so—and I would just say, when you’re in a situation where job creation, if you adjust for likely overcounting in the way that BLS does its work, is pretty close to zero. So maximum employment doesn’t, on a sustainable basis, doesn’t—if you’re making, creating zero jobs, if it’s in equilibrium, if it’s in balance, it’s a pretty, as I said before, pretty curious balance. So I thought, and many of my colleagues thought—in fact, you’ve seen the last two meetings that it was appropriate for us to react by supporting demand with our rates. And we’ve done that—we’ve reduced so that rates are looser. I wouldn’t say that they’re accommodative right now, but they’re meaningfully less tight than they were. And that should help so that at least the labor market doesn’t get worse. It’s a complicated situation, and some people argue that this is supply and we really can’t affect it much with our tools, but others argue, as I do, that there is an effect from demand, and that we should use our tools to support the labor market when we see this happening.
and this:
> Yeah, I don’t—I don’t think interest rates are an important part of the AI—the data center story. I think—people think there are great economics in building these data centers, and they’re making a lot of money building them, and I think they have very high present value and all that sort of thing. It’s not really—it’s not about 25 basis points here or there. We use our tools to support the labor market and to create price stability. That’s what we do. That’s our two jobs, right? So we’re here to—by lowering rates at the margin, that will support demand, and that will support more hiring. And that’s why we do it. Now, no 25 basis point or even 50 basis point hike is going to be a dispositive thing. But, ultimately, lower rates will support more demand, and that’ll support hiring over time. And, of course, we also have to be careful about this, which is what we’ve been doing because we know where inflation is and we know—I’ve told you the story, this complicated story, but this is the best assessment that we can make and—but because there’s uncertainty around inflation and the path ahead for inflation, that’s why we’re going—that’s why the pace we’re going has been a careful one.
Again, very much directly contradicting both the dumb AI and more importantly blatantly in opposition to what the above poster said, that "prior cuts don't promote jobs". This is why you cannot go getting your information from the AI summaries - they're using clickbait articles written by laymen for laymen as their sources, and it's leaving you incredibly uninformed.
My best advice is that if you want to better understand and follow complex topics, ditch the AI and start reading the direct statements and primary sourcing for yourself. AI can’t really discern quality or accuracy of these articles, even when I instruct AI to form statements based only on direct transcripts or federal reserve publications it hallucinates and draws info from bullshit like the above.
Scrandon | a day ago
Those are not the only sources saying that. Reuters, CNBC, CNN, and Fox Business are all linked in the AI summary I get. So either yours was different or more likely you are cherry-picking a few sources you didn’t like in bad faith. Anyway, the second quote you pasted yourself literally says some Fed members think it’s more of a supply issue and rate cuts won’t be effective. It says “some people“ and my understanding is he is referring to rate setters.
NavyDean simplified and lost some nuance and expressed more certainty about future decisions than they should have, obviously nobody knows right now. But for you to describe that as openly lying and just as bad as disinformation in conservative subs is completely inappropriate.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
I’m not going to run around in circles with you - I’ve displayed directly what came out of Powells mouth. You’re linking me news articles, I’m linking you transcripts. This difference should be apparent to anyone who’s interested in economics, I’m guessing you’re relatively new to this topic and that’s fine, but understand the standard of sourcing and adjust how you gather information.
Absent you finding me a direct quote of Powell corroborating what you said, I think the smart move for you is to understand that you were misinformed because you didn’t understand the massive gap between reality, media written for laymen, and AI, and adjust your knowledge set accordingly moving forward.
You have a choice here - to be smart and learn something, or to do the typical uninformed Redditor thing and try to argue your way out of being wrong. Doing the latter never makes you more knowledgeable.
kananishino | a day ago
Where did they even say this?
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
Not only did they not, every transcript one can find on the matter says the opposite.
african_cheetah | a day ago
Fed usually prioritizes jobs over inflation. Every crisis, this has been the prioritization.
dee_berg | a day ago
Paul Volcker would like a word.
Edit: the only other example of stagflation, the Fed jacked up rates to 20% and crushed the economy to get rid of inflation.
Your comment is nonsense.
Nwcray | a day ago
Agreed, but also that was 45 years ago and after a decade of stagflation with double digit inflation rates. I’m not sure we’ve got the willpower to do anything like it today.
dee_berg | a day ago
Right, but that was the only other example of stagflation.
The Fed was clearly willing to jack up rates to fight inflation this time as well. They are also willing to leave them above R*, which they are doing now.
The idea that they are only focused on jobs is silly if you are looking from 2000-2020, there was no inflation
Otakeb | a day ago
I think it's a matter of whether they want to test the waters with supporting jobs first like in the 70's, or skip to a disaster assumption of persistent stagflation at the first few signs of it and crush the market.
It's a terrible spot to be in, and I think the Fed should be given more levers of control; potentially some very small authority into fiscal policy about some small, graded, segmented tax multipliers they can add or take away from the current tax brackets. Something more than just a big "print money or crash the economy" button they have to press gingerly back and forth like manually tuning a PID loop with an 8 month response delay....what a fucking job. I am not envious.
Petrichordates | a day ago
Their comment is 100% correct. All it says is the Fed usually prioritizes jobs, which it has.
That there is one specific counter example obviously doesn't invalidate that point.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
Lmao, but reddit comment chains are built on someone feeling intellectually superior by citing one really niche one time specific thing that they can argue about
RIP_Soulja_Slim | a day ago
For one, that's one event in a crazy environment, but also the general sentiment is that with the benefit of hindsight Volker raised a bit too much. It's certainly not his fault, we know a lot more about monetary policy and the economy today, but you can compare the Fed's hikes tossing us in to a pretty tough recession in the 80 with the near soft landing we've experienced post covid to see some stark differences.
Mr_Soul_Crusher | a day ago
That’s because the person you replied to is a 20 YO Econ 101 student
kittenTakeover | a day ago
Prioritizing employment over inflation is always the right choice when employment is still sensitive to interest rates. Although, after a certain point, especially if inflation gets high enough, lowering interest rates stops spurring investment and lowering unemployment. At that point you don't want to lower further. Although, I don't know how you would know when to raise. Perhaps watching savings/investment numbers for guidance? The goal in such a situation is proportionally less savings and more investment.
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
Wouldn’t a soft job market support rate cuts?
ValdezX3R0 | a day ago
In a normal market, I would say yes. With inflation rising it could create an issue later if we dip into a recession. We can't financially handle another QE like 2008 and the pandemic. That leaves rate cuts as pretty much the only tool in the Feds arsenal. We had rate cuts from last year have they had little impact on job creation thus far.
Background_Baker9021 | 16 hours ago
I'm a rando. I think the books are being cooked as far as GDP and unemployment go. What we are seeing promoted as "the numbers" are being "massaged" even more than "normal" times... I'm witnessing it via what's happening in my industry.
Murgos- | a day ago
With the way this administration has shown a willingness to alter and hide data I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this is still wildly optimistic.
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
They’re hiding lousy results by putting out a lousy report?
Bellfast123 | 15 hours ago
The FTX special.
Spiritual_Echidna_65 | a day ago
GDP growth high -> must be because administration faked it
GDP growth low -> must be because administration faked it
oldgeektech | a day ago
If they don’t want to be accused of faking stuff, maybe they shouldn’t have fired the BLS chief right after a bad jobs report… or decided on an economic policy of shooting yourself in the foot in order to claim a balance in trade deficit.
FidgetyHerbalism | 17 hours ago
>maybe they shouldn’t have fired the BLS chief right after a bad jobs report
Erika McEntarfer got fired over two months of downwards revisions that were much larger than normal. Democrats spent months explaining that these revisions were standard practice and some error is normal.
Yet now there are many on this very sub that are pointing to similarly sized downwards revisions (the ~1m downwards annual benchmark) as evidence the estimates are terrible and that the administration is exaggerating jobs.
Ultimately, there are people who will distrust the BLS basically no matter what, just because the Other Guy is currently in charge.
oldgeektech | 16 hours ago
To your point on Erika, perhaps it had something to do with Trump’s Truth Social post about how he was firing her. I would say anybody worth any level of non-partisanship will admit that it’s, at best, heavily skewed towards something that could be put as “Other Guy is currently in charge”. If the highest office in the land will throw a partisan fit, I sure as hell expect Redditors to be in the same boat.
All in all, yes, no matter what happens, people will claim “GOT YOU!”. What I can say is that there are a few irrefutable facts that I know of right now:
Overall, is Trump really that bad? The numbers don’t suggest it—at least not yet. The US economy has not been living on fundamentals for years now. We have one thing going for us: the USD being the world standard with a reliable credit rating. Something will have to give somewhere. Wealth cannot keep funneling to the top and there not be some kind of crunch where a lot of people suffer. It’s a delicate balance that must be maintained and I’m not optimistic that Trump’s approach keeps the boat steady.
DianedePoiters | a day ago
Hard to trust GDP data when people get fired if the report is bad.
Wish he wouldn’t fire them though, it’s making unemployment worse.
PlayfulSurprise5237 | a day ago
You see... that's the thing about lying and trust..
You 15 years old or just not spend much time outside with other people?
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
This is literally what they think lol.
“Well, you see, sometimes they fake it to look bad so we don’t suspect they’re faking it.”
perestroika12 | a day ago
Really not surprising it just took awhile for all the bad policy decisions to show up in the numbers.
Tariffs, wrecking government spending and government jobs, ai and lopsided capex investments, rampant inflation and cooking the books. It’s the report everyone was feeling for the last year.
Cutting government spending was probably the worst move. It had no impact on the debt, and all it did was hurt every sector of the economy, and permanently damaged US research.
BroBeansBMS | a day ago
I hope there is a period in my lifetime when republicans finally lose the “they are good for the economy” narrative. They have consistently performed worse than democrats on the economy while in office since the 1950s up until the present day.
padizzledonk | a day ago
>I hope there is a period in my lifetime when republicans finally lose the “they are good for the economy” narrative. They have consistently performed worse than democrats on the economy while in office since the 1950s up until the present day.
Its honestly infuriating to me too
And the fact that they run on cutting the budget deficit and then immediately explode the deficit even more as their first act in power is even more aggravating
We're a dumb country, like really fucking stupid stupid people live here and vote, its honestly really depressing
ballmermurland | a day ago
Or they run on "Christian values" and then elect a thrice-married serial philanderer and convicted criminal.
wals02481 | a day ago
A literal felon.
ArrivesLate | a day ago
My head has been exploding for over a decade.
Vash_Stampede_60B | a day ago
Unfortunately, people have consistently voted against their own interests. They ignore what the data says and go with their feelings. This does not lead to good economic policy.
Wire_Cath_Needle_Doc | a day ago
B-b-but Elon says investing in AI will skyrocket the GDP
OddlyFactual1512 | a day ago
1.4% is an abysmal number. The times this occurred in the last 25 years:
Excluding the anomaly in Q4 2022, those were tough economic times. Based on current economic trends and historical data, this is more likely to be the beginning of a trend rather than an outlier.
Source: Real Gross Domestic Product (GDPC1) | FRED | St. Louis Fed
emi_fyi | a day ago
What happened Q3 2011? I know all the others off the top of my head, just not that one
OddlyFactual1512 | a day ago
The economy was still struggling to recover from the GFC.
emi_fyi | a day ago
sure but what made q3 2011 worse than q1 or 2, or all of 2010? i did some research and it pointed to the debt crisis, which makes sense to me.
Vigorato | a day ago
Please stop being dramatic. The government shutdown was always going to reduce the number by around 1%, and the only part that was really below expectations was trade. The actual parts of GDP that you should care about, consumption and investment, both grew by a solid ~2.5% qoq annualized.
The world is not ending
SprinklesMedical7881 | a day ago
cope
Vigorato | a day ago
I don’t get why people in this sub are so obsessed with seeing doom, gloom and conspiracy in everything. The report was fine, nothing great, no reason to claim the sky is falling
ballmermurland | a day ago
Seems like maybe Trump should have done a better job as president to avoid a shutdown?
Vigorato | a day ago
Not sure how that is relevant. How bad a president he is was not being discussed, just how bad the Q4 gdp report is.
ballmermurland | a day ago
There is no evidence that a 6 week partial gov shutdown reduced the GDP for the entire year by a full percentage point.
Vigorato | a day ago
I didn’t say that. It did for Q4
ass_pineapples | a day ago
Good thing shutdowns are a thing of the past
Scrandon | a day ago
Yea good thing. Oh, we’re in one now? Well never mind then…
I could totally see this as a Colbert bit
6r1akeu9 | a day ago
Why don't the other shutdowns show up in this list?
Vigorato | a day ago
Because they didn’t last 6 weeks and have almost all government closed
6r1akeu9 | a day ago
You're going to tell me that the 5 week government shutdown in 2018 had no measurable impact on GDP?
Vigorato | a day ago
I didn’t say anything of the sort, but it was certainly less because it was a partial shutdown only. Every credible economist said months ago the shutdown would reduce q4 gdp by around 1%. How do you think they estimated that if not for the impact of previous shutdowns?
6r1akeu9 | a day ago
Because I was taught to extrapolate data.
If this shutdown showed up in the GDP reports, the last ones did too.
The 2018-19 shutdown was about half of the economic impact that Q4 26 was - about half the furloughed employees and half the fiscal impact to the budget.
Q4 2018 saw GDP growth of 2.2%. Extrapolate the above - if the impact of the 18-19 shutdown was half the size, we should have had 2.7% growth just like how we should have had 2.4% growth with this report.
Q1 2019 reflects the picture - growth of 3.1%
So even taking into account our shutdown, GDP growth would have been lower in 2025 than it was the last time we had a major shutdown by 0.3%.
It's not "oh it's okay, it was the shutdown" - it's "we're on a downward trend, and you're trying to convince yourself that it's anything but."
Vigorato | a day ago
What was the change in the size of the workforce then vs 2025? Perhaps you should be adjusting for growth in GDP per person? Or perhaps worker? Productivity growth was great last year, after all.
The fact of the matter is that understanding what is going on requires a lot more than extrapolating data and making sweeping claims about trends.
6r1akeu9 | a day ago
See how, now, you're starting to look for other explanations to try to say "oh but actually"?
Also, why is someone from Wales commenting on American GDP anyway?
Vigorato | a day ago
Not that you’ll believe it, but I’m an economist that gets paid to advise on US economy to finance industry.
OddlyFactual1512 | a day ago
TIL facts are dramatic if they disagree with one's false reality.
Vigorato | a day ago
Maybe tomorrow you will learn to look past headline growth numbers and actually look at what is going on underneath before pronouncing things abysmal
OddlyFactual1512 | a day ago
Maybe you will learn to evaluate based on fact and logic rather than you false world view. Also, 'abysmal number' <> 'pronouncing things abysmal'
Vigorato | a day ago
Fact and logic is the complete opposite of your original comment. You clearly are clueless about what economic statistics actually mean, with your dramatic pronouncements of doom that are so far removed from the reality that the report was not that bad. How do you think investment and consumption both growing at around 2.5% is bad?!?
OddlyFactual1512 | a day ago
Ad hominem. Look it up. Also, my initial comment quite literally included the factual data to demonstrate how the current GDP growth compares to that of the last 25 years, along with a link to the source. Your comments are simply a bunch of ad hominem attacks.
Vigorato | a day ago
You are comparing a single quarter when the government shutdown completely for six weeks against periods when no similar things happened. How you think that is a valid comparison beggars belief. You are literally saying “gdp only grew 1.4%” with zero explanation or understanding of why, and it that why that matters, not the 1.4%
You also have not explained why you think 2.5% growth in consumption and investment is bad.
OddlyFactual1512 | a day ago
Non-essential portions of the government shut down for 6 weeks. The rest of the economy continued. Also, the extended shutdown in 2018 didn't exhibit the same impact on GDP growth. Your assertion that the lower growth is due to the shutdown requires justification other than you said so.
Vigorato | a day ago
Look at the press release from the BEA today. They specify that it reduced growth in Q4 by 1%. Most of that will be recovered in Q1.
Miserable_Aspect_749 | a day ago
Are you arguing that the recent shutdowns are the reason that, in an entire year, we had 1.4% GDP growth and a total of 180k jobs created? This is abysmal awful data.
I do think that this sub can be somewhat dramatic about data, but this is not that instance. This is really really really bad data.
Vigorato | a day ago
1.4% was the annualized change in Q4 vs Q3. The GDP growth for 2025 was 2.2%. The shutdown reduced Q4 growth by 1%.
Please at least get the numbers correct before coming at me.
It’s also a bad idea to look at any single quarter in isolation, especially when unusual events happen. If you recall, US GDP contracted in Q1 last year, entirely because there was a huge front running of imports ahead of Trump tariffs. That factor completely reversed in Q2. The result is that neither headline GDP number was particularly useful. The same thing applies in this latest quarter. The parts that matter most, consumption and investment, were both absolutely fine.
FidgetyHerbalism | 17 hours ago
>in an entire year, we had 1.4% GDP growth
1.4% is what the rate would be if annualised, it's not the actual figure that occurred over the last year.
Demonstrating that you don't even understand the data you're reading is not a compelling way to make your point, even if I agree it's bad.
loganbootjak | a day ago
JFC. Trumps record so far:
way to go. But he made $3bn personally last year so at least someone is doing good.
FidgetyHerbalism | 17 hours ago
> Trumps record so far: - 1 million jobs lost 2025
This would be like saying Biden's record was the ~800k+ downwards revisions that happened under his admin.
Use the actual final jobs growth number, not the magnitude of the revisions.
loganbootjak | 6 hours ago
181k jobs created. over 1 million cut. how's that?
TheTav3n | a day ago
So I've read a few articles about this. I am struggling to figure out how much inflation/consumer spending was a factor here? Like high or low? Because everyone seems to emphasize the shutdown but the media is bought and sold right now.
PoopyisSmelly | a day ago
Inflation low.
Consumer spending - still pretty good.
Investment - pretty good
Government spending - very bad
Exports - marginally lower
Imports - marginally hogher
Government spending increases GDP or decreases it when there is a cut to spending, so the government shut down was a big hit. Government spending contributes around 17% of GDP in the US. Its contribution to GDP was roughly -1%.
Edit: I didnt add literally any editorialism to my explanation at all, not sure why people are being snarky and downvoting. I could have just pasted the link and told you to read, smh
https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/gdp-advance-estimate-4th-quarter-and-year-2025
ballmermurland | a day ago
Inflation is still above historical norms btw. Just because it's lower than it was during the peak after COVID doesn't mean it's low.
PoopyisSmelly | 20 hours ago
>historical norms
Maybe post 2008 (2.3% average), but historically it is actually pretty low. Inflation had averaged 3.3% for the last ~100 years in the US. Last ~50 years has averaged 3.6%.
Inflation ended the year at 2.7% and now is 2.4%.
So yes, by just about every measure inflation is low.
SprinklesMedical7881 | a day ago
lotta cope here
Miserable_Aspect_749 | a day ago
He's somewhat right, a bit hyperbolic, but what it does show is very poor GDP and job growth with high income earners propping up the economy. This is a really really discouraging report.
PoopyisSmelly | a day ago
???
Go look at the data and tell me how I'm wrong
https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/gdp-advance-estimate-4th-quarter-and-year-2025
Complete-Parking2134 | a day ago
Can you explain please I’m dumb
0WatcherintheWater0 | a day ago
Not entirely sure the consumer spending numbers are “pretty good”, if you dive into the numbers, the increase there is from increased consumption of health care and housing and insurance services. Technically an increase but I very much still hold to the idea it’s a result of demand-shifting from the tariffs.
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
How does demand shift make consumption not count?
0WatcherintheWater0 | a day ago
It counts, the point is it's not sustainable, productivity-driven growth but rather a temporary boost to domestic consumption at the cost of reducing total consumption massively, making consumers lose out on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services.
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
Meaning tariffs steered would-be import dollars to domestic goods? How does that reduce consumption? (This is a sincere question, not a veiled argument.)
0WatcherintheWater0 | a day ago
Domestic services, technically, not goods. There has been near-zero increase in consumption of domestic goods recently.
>How does that reduce consumption?
Because foreign goods and services are cheaper in real terms and/or have higher quality. That's why people buy them to begin with. Tariffs remove any cost advantage foreign goods have and force consumers to settle for the more expensive, less beneficial to them domestic goods and services.
This effect is easily illustrated if you look at the Econ 101 tariff graph. Total consumer surplus goes down while domestic producer surplus goes up a much smaller amount, with tariff implementation.
TheTav3n | 23 hours ago
TY, what I needed
Tasty-Business-4872 | a day ago
We’re winning! The US is winning! Biggest win of all time! You see we like to do it big in the US. Spending, tax cuts, class war (don’t let them fucks say otherwise), Epstein!!!!
Come on man.
papaswamp | a day ago
Bigly…very bigly.
newzinoapp | a day ago
The government shutdown is doing most of the heavy lifting here. Federal spending contracted 5.1% and subtracted roughly a full percentage point from growth. Back that out and you're at 2.4%, which is soft but not the disaster the headline suggests.
defaultedebt | a day ago
Not great to see the miss, but it's not hugely surprising. PCE remains sticky (0.1% above consensus). Should be noted that a significant portion of the GDP miss was due to Gov shutdown, per BEA: https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/gdp-advance-estimate-4th-quarter-and-year-2025
>Real GDP increased at an annual rate of 1.4 percent (0.4 percent at a quarterly rate 1) in the fourth quarter, reflecting increases in consumer spending and investment that were partly offset by decreases in government spending and exports. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased. [...]
>Due to a lapse in appropriations, some federal government agencies were closed, and some employees were furloughed from October 1 through November 12. The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified because they are embedded in the regular source data that underlie the estimates and cannot be separately identified. However, BEA did estimate the effects of a reduction in the labor services supplied by federal employees. BEA estimates that this reduction in services provided by the federal government subtracted about 1.0 percentage point from real GDP growth in the fourth quarter. Because furloughed federal employees received back pay, the shutdown had no impact on current-dollar federal compensation and was reflected as a temporary increase in the prices paid for federal employee compensation. For more information, an FAQ is available on BEA’s website.
So really, there's more to it than "people stopped spending" or "the economy is doomed."
Straight_Document_89 | a day ago
Another huge concern is the what the fed is having to do with the repo market constantly now. Private credit is an albatross. It’s all mostly because of the big 7 and AI.
joepez | a day ago
Except the impact on GDP is speculation at best. As stated in the BEA report itself:
“ The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified because they are embedded in the regular source data that underlie the estimates and cannot be separately identified.”
The callout and speculation of a full point is a guess. It’s as much as a guess as Trumps made up 2pts statement.
defaultedebt | a day ago
>The callout and speculation of a full point is a guess.
It's an estimation, there's a difference. They use data to make the calculations. It's not just one guy saying "I guess it kinda was negative...let's make it -1%." https://www.bea.gov/help/faq/1483
>However, one component of GDP for which the effects can be estimated is real federal government consumption expenditures, specifically, real federal government compensation.[2] Conceptually, real compensation measures labor input, such as hours worked by federal employees. The estimate of real compensation is based primarily on employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). During a government shutdown, federal workers are counted as “employed” in the BLS data if they eventually receive backpay, so these data would not reflect the reduction in services provided by the federal workforce. To account for the reduction in services, BEA adjusts real compensation based on an estimate of the reduction in hours worked, reflecting the number of employees furloughed and the number of furlough days.
You are wrong.
joepez | a day ago
Actually you need to read and comprehend. My quote (verbatim from the PR you provided) is that the GDP impact cannot be quantified. As in the GDP impact cannot be determined so anything they are proposing is by definition a guess.
What you’re quoting is their broad statement on an input into the GDP (not actual GDP) of the compensation rate paid to federal employees using an “estimate.” Merriam-Webster defines the use of the wrd “estimate” in this case to be “calculate” and a synonym for “estimate” in this context is: Guess. Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/estimate
Reading comprehension is important in this case. They are guessing a 1pt of GDP but by their own definition they can’t quantify and by the section you pointed out an input into GDP (not gdp) is an estimate or a guess.
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
> Reading comprehension is important
Begging you guys to learn to argue without trotting out this extremely tired accusation.
They understand what you’re saying and disagree.
defaultedebt | a day ago
Yeah, you're utterly clueless, I get it. I provide a FAQ link for laypeople, like yourself, and you go on to quote merriam webster. Which, by the way, are way more lenient in their methodology than the Oxford English Dictionary. I will provide the OED link (which I assume you do not have access to as you are undoubtedly a layperson): https://www.oed.com/dictionary/estimation_n?tab=meaning_and_use
>4.b. 1598 >† Conjecture, guessing. Obsolete. rare. Cf. 3.
> 1598
>I speake not this in estimation, As what I thinke might be, but what I know Is ruminated, plotted, and set downe. W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1 i. iii. 266
Citation for Estimate is below:
Oxford English Dictionary, “estimate (v.), sense 2,” https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5215180811.
Since this meaningless semantic comment you have been confused by is dealt with, we can now look at what actually matters.
No, the BEA does not guess. They, per the FAQ use "real federal government compensation" using from the data BLS as to estimate, not guess, the extent of impact a shutdown has had on the GDP. This has already been explained to you. This is data science.
joepez | a day ago
I enjoy how you need to find an alternative dictionary to try and prove a point. As much as I enjoy watching you twist to try and defend your position. You have yet to acknowledge two simple facts: 1 - Your own PR has a technical note that again states the following: itself: “ The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified because they are embedded in the regular source data that underlie the estimates and cannot be separately identified.”
Cannot be qualified means they can’t calculate the impact on the GDP therefore the 1% is a guess or estimate
2 - The section you keep trying to use is about an input into the calculation and not actually about the GDP calculation output. They also state it’s an estimate (or a guess) and it’s an input NOT the output out of the calculation which is “not quantifiable.”
So defend the this administration failing agenda and results if you wish but in the end you’re just guessing
defaultedebt | a day ago
> I enjoy how you need to find an alternative dictionary to try and prove a point.
Not an alternative. The most authoritative dictionary in the history of the English language.
It is hilarious that you argue semantics and get wrong the words quantified and qualified:
>The full effects of the partial federal government shutdown on the fourth-quarter estimates cannot be quantified [...]
And
>Cannot be qualified means [...]
>The section you keep trying to use is about an input into the calculation and not actually about the GDP calculation output. They also state it’s an estimate (or a guess) and it’s an input NOT the output out of the calculation which is “not quantifiable.”
This is a very convoluted sentence and bears no real meaning. They cannot record data when they are furloughed, and such data sources are not readily available or recorded by standard at the BLS or BEA. They substitute this with the most closely related data source which is real federal government compensation. It is most closely correlated with what the data is actually, which is why the BEA use it. It is an estimate precisely because it uses indirect data sources in place of directly recorded data. This is still reliable, it is still accurate. It is also standard practice. See 2018-19 Shutdown FAQ: https://www.bea.gov/help/faq/1301
>To account for the reduction in government services that occurred over the fourth and first quarters, BEA will adjust the real federal government compensation estimates. The adjustment will be based on the number of federal employees furloughed and the number of furlough days. Of the approximately 800,000 employees of the federal agencies without appropriations, roughly 340,000 were furloughed, and the remaining 460,000 employees were “excepted,” meaning they were required to work even though they could not be paid until funding was restored.3 Excepted jobs are often related to the protection of life or property (the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration have large numbers of excepted employees). Over the course of the shutdown, the number of “excepted” employees changed, such as when IRS employees were recalled to work in mid-January. The output of all federal employees who worked during the shutdown will be included in BEA’s estimates of 2018q4 and 2019q1 real federal government compensation.
Now, back to the stupidity:
>So defend the this administration failing agenda
Ignoring the obvious error in your comment "defend the this", I will respond. I abhor the morons in charge, as do the many people I know who work in think tanks for economic policy. We, as professionals, know their policies are economically stupid.
This does not mean that figures from the BLS / BEA / [Insert Statistical Agency] are inaccurate, untrustworthy, or any other synonyms you prefer. It is accurate, follows a transparent methodology, and is available to the public. Now, restating what the BEA themselves have done is not a defense or an attack on anybody. It is a statement of fact: "The BLS used X method to find Y."
You are not a serious person. You dislike data science, you seem to prefer feelings and semantic arguments over the meanings of words, rather than what the data tells us. Take Econ 101 and come back when you have learned something.
mbreaddit | a day ago
Biggest differences last times were mostly when underestimating.
Here the most biggest diffs of the last years.
|Release Date|Estimate|Actual|Diff| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Feb 20, 2026 (Q4)|2.8% |1.4%|-1.4%| |Dec 23, 2025 (Q3)|3.3% |4.3% |+1.0%| |Sep 25, 2025 (Q2)|3.3% |3.8% |+0.5%| |Jul 30, 2025 (Q2)|2.5% |3.0% |+0.5%| |Apr 30, 2025 (Q1)|0.2% |-0.3% |-0.5%| |Apr 25, 2024 (Q1)|2.5% |1.6% |-0.9%| |Jan 25, 2024 (Q4)|2.0% |3.3% |+1.3%|
So it happens, the Diff is bigger than estimated, but this does not confuse me. The actual growth is still not the worst.
It happened in good phases, in bad phases and sometimes they are right, sometimes wrong.
Most of time times the Diff is below +-0.5.
canthinkof123 | a day ago
Why are there two Q2’s in 2025?
AbsolutelyDireWolf | a day ago
July and Sept are just two months apart and both in Q3, measuring growth Vs 12 months earlier.
Federal_Rope1590 | a day ago
I’ve heard the argument that tariffs in the last year made GDP growth “look” higher than it actually was. With the Supreme Court revision, could we possibly envision quarterly gdp decline sometime this year?
I personally suspect there have been a lot of deflationary pressures under the radar since late 2024 that the tariffs and BLS inaccuracies have masked. Is there any merit to what I laid out above?
carlos_the_dwarf_ | a day ago
Tariffs are bad, but can’t really disguise GDP one way or another, that’s just a thing people say for partisan reasons.
gmb92 | a day ago
Just a reminder to not take those GDPNow projections as gospel as some are inclined to do when it pushes a narrative. They had it over 5% at one point and it dropped sharply to 3% in the last few days. Still off.
https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/gdpnow