April 18, 2025 • 16 mins
Amid tariff whiplash, renewed inflation concerns and turbulence in financial markets, Americans are left wondering: Do the economic vibes match our economic reality? And are we headed for a recession?
Today on the show, Bloomberg senior markets editor and columnist John Authers joins host David Gura to discuss official and unofficial recession indicators and what the state of the economy tells us about what could be ahead.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
With on again, off again tariffs, renewed inflation concerns, and
turbulence in financial markets, there's a question on everyone's mind.
Are we headed for a recession? As early as last week,
Goldman Sachs was saying it was more likely than not.
So is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond, who went
on Fox Business after the first round of President Trump's
(00:31):
reciprocal tariffs on China went into effect.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Do you personally expect a recession?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I am going to defer to my economousness point, but
I think probably that's a likely outcome.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But then Trump paused some of his tariffs, and Goldman
Sachs rescinded its recession forecast. On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair
Jerome Powell shared the Fed's economic outlook.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Despite heightened uncertainty and downside risks, the US economy is
still in a solid position. The labor market is at
or near maximum employment, Inflation has come down a great deal,
but is still running a bit above our two percent objective.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Powell also shared that early data suggests that GDP growth
has slowed but not reversed. Still, consumer sentiment is it
nearly record lows? And all over social media everything seems
to be a recession indicator, subtle signs people notice in
their daily lives suggesting we could be on the brink
of a downturn.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You want to know the craziest recession indicator I saw
today a bagel shop was advertising free water phase.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Sixty percent of general admission ticket buyers at Coachella used
buy now, pay later to finance their tickets, And ladies
and gentlemen, some of these are more serious than others.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Here are my recession indicators. Katie Perry going to space.
Flash mobs are back.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
I saw one in Grand Central the other day and
I said, that's a bad sign for the times.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The general takeaway is the vibes are off, so are
we headed for recession? How will we know if we
get there? And how much does that label really matter?
I'm David Gera and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News Today. On the show, John Authurs, Bloomberg Senior
Markets editor and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, will help
(02:15):
us parse the official and unofficial recession indicators and understand
what lies ahead. John, a basic question to start right
out at econ one oh one. What is a recession?
Define it for me.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's a more complicated question than you think. A recession
is when not only does growth slow down, but the
size of the economy actually contracts, which doesn't happen that often.
The most common way to measure that is through gross
domestic product. The most obvious symptom of it is unemployment.
(02:53):
The standard shorthands definition is two successive quarters of negative
GDP growth, But that's a shorthand definition. Ultimately, it's the
pot of Stuart's definition of pornography. I know it when
I see it. That's a Supreme Court quotation I've just
given you there. But generally speaking, if you have to
(03:14):
question whether you're in a recession, you probably aren't. And
if you are, you know all about it.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Who effectively knows it when they see it? I gather
the National Bureau of Economic Research plays an outsize role
here in determining whether or not we are, in fact
in a recession.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes, so the default definition of a recession in the
US is when the NBER says, so, you know, big
group of very good academic economists and the lots of
government backing behind them, and they take many things into account. Obviously, unemployment,
(03:49):
gross domestic product mattering more than anything else. The big
problem with the NBR approach for the purposes of history,
for the purposes of analyzing data looking back to see
what happens during recessions, it's brilliant. In real time, it's
close to useless, because it's of the nature of a
recession that it needs to go on for a while,
(04:11):
a matter of months before you're sure it's a recession.
If you wait until the NBER announces that we are
indeed in a recession, it's almost certainly too late if
you're a business making a decision, or particularly if you're
an investor choosing about the stock market. So my favorite
example is two thousand and eight, year of the global
financial crisis. The NBR didn't make that announcement until the
(04:34):
first of December, by which point Lehman Brothers had gone bankrupt.
The stock market had dropped almost fifty percent. At that point.
From the point of view of decisions in the here
and now, the NBER is not helpful for looking back.
For doing analysis, it's the gold standard.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think there are other groups who move faster and
here I'm thinking about economists at the big financial firms.
Who's saying that we are headed for a recession right now,
at this moment in time in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Five naming names is very few people are saying there's
one hundred percent chance of a recession, which is interesting
because two years ago quite a few people were saying
that and it didn't happen. More or less, everybody on
the street has formally raised their probability of a recession
in the wake of particularly the Liberation Day tariffs. But
(05:22):
just the sheer uncertainty that the tariff environment causes makes
it that much more likely that the economy will slow down.
The thing that's fascinating here is the soft data versus
the hard data. This is the sentiment data. Yeah, sentiment data,
but some of it's pretty practical sentiments. So the ism
supply Manager's survey is asking you, are your prices you're
(05:44):
having to pay going up or going down? Are you
building your own inventory or reducing it, etc. So it's
a survey and it includes some sentiment, but it's not
purely sentimental. Now, the soft data suggests we're already in
a the way that confidence of small businesses, the confidence
of consumers has dropped in the last few months has
(06:08):
never happened before unless we've subsequently been in a recession.
That said, the hard data that the last unemployment numbers
were fine and inflation is coming down nicely. The hard
data is still basically the technical terms might possibly be
mid cycle slow down, but basically no particular reason from
(06:28):
the most important data to think that we are already
in a recession. This is primarily about the amazing goings
on about trade policy, which we all know about by
this point, and the way people are reacting to them,
and how those reactions are changing their decisions in real time.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I'm curious as you look at sort of what the
banks are saying about the probability of a recession and
what they're actually doing, how they're positioning themselves. Is there
any sort of divide there.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
On the banks. I don't see that much in the
way of true retrenchment already by the banks. I don't
think somebody like Jamie Diamond is as sanguine as he
was unless he means it. You don't talk down the
economy if you're somebody like that, unless you really believe
it's necessary and responsible to do so. Jamie DIMIs had
(07:19):
an exciting and checkered career, but he doesn't you know,
he doesn't do alarmism. So I'm most interested in the
next couple of weeks when we hear from the companies
that make things, and particularly obviously to think the companies
that import and exports a lot of actual stuff rather
than services, and that's when we'll really get an idea.
But I do believe the banks when they say they're
(07:40):
bracing for tougher times.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Wall Street economists have updated their forecasts, and people who
play the prediction markets like Polymarket, are weighing in what
they expect and some of John's top recession indicators. After
the break, I'm speaking with John Arthurs. He's a senior
(08:05):
markets editor at Bloomberg and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
You wrote about this in your column that the betting
markets and what those betting on the markets are telling
you about their sense of the likelihood of a recession.
What are you seeing when you look at polymarket and.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
The like Polymarket, which during the election, you remember, was
accused not totally fairly of being somewhat right wing or
pro Trump biased, saw a chance of a recession of
somewhat under twenty percent at the beginning of the year,
which was a little on the bearish side. It got
(08:40):
over sixty percent before Trump pulled back on the main
reciprocal tariffs the ninety day pause. It's still at this
point over fifty percent that we have a recession by
the end of this year, which needs to be triggered
by the NBER saying so, or by two quarters of
GDP being negative, which means means that you shouldn't be
(09:01):
making that bet. You shouldn't be thinking it's that probable
unless you think the recession has probably already started. The
people who play on polymarket do have real money at stake,
and that means that you should take them quite seriously.
The mere fact that people think that makes it more
likely that you get a self fulfilling prophecy that people
(09:21):
are just their behavior accordingly spend less and you get
a recession.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
John, we've been talking about the statistics, the data professional
economists used to determine if there is a recession or
there's likely to be one. Let's talk about some of
the unofficial indicators that could give us a sense of
where the economy is right now and where it's headed.
Are there any that you look to maybe softer signs
that the vibes are off in the economy.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
In terms of the numbers, I look at things that
do bother me somewhat. FedEx's share price has been doing
very badly. Significance of that is, obviously if there is
a purer play on globalization and on level of economic
activity than FedEx. I can't really think what it is.
And the fact that its share price is going down
(10:05):
isn't all top down globalization is in trouble. Better gets
out of FedEx. It's people looking at their numbers and
looking at what the company is saying and thinking they'd
better get out. And by the way, that implies the
economy is slowing down. That one does actually concern me
quite a bit. Another measure that isn't fool proof, but
(10:26):
again because so many real people are playing with real
money in a way that can have self fulfilling consequences,
is the metals market. The ratio of gold to copper,
the amount of copper you could buy with an ounce
of gold, has never been higher. Copper is basically something
(10:47):
you buy when the economy is doing well, particularly when
China is electrifying and building stuff, or when people are
building lots of cars and houses. Gold is something you
buy when you're worried, when you can't think of anything
better to do with your money than put it in
the shiny metal and it'll be safe. So I take
that pretty seriously as an indicator that things aren't good.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
As you look at all of the data, hard and soft,
where are you on this question of whether or not
we are in a recession or headed for one?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
This is the agonizing part of it. It really does
depend on trade. If tariffs on China stay at about
one hundred and forty percent for any length of time,
there has to be a recession. I don't see how
there cannot be. The latest World Trade Organization estimates are that,
assuming these level of tariffs, imports to the US from
(11:38):
China are going to be down seventy percent. If you
think how important those imports are, there's no way you
can source that adequately from anybody else. In the very
short term. It will mean shortages, it will mean factories
having to go on pause. If we really stick with
the tariffs that's currently laid out, there will be a recession.
(12:01):
I would be astonished if there wasn't. My best guess
as to where trade policy is going to go, is
that it's going to do enough damage that we will
fall into something the NBAR calls a recession by the
end of this year.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Here's a big think question. I'm curious how much naming
a recession a recession matters. So, going back to what
you said at the top, you know, when you see it,
if people are feeling economic hardship, they know the reality
of the economy today themselves. Does it matter if we're
technically labeling something a recession or not.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It probably does a little because this is a concept
from George Soros, the hedge fund manager. He bases his
whole investments approach around reflexivity, which is his idea that
markets can create their own reality. So in terms of information,
if you think prices are going to go up, you
(12:57):
go out and buy stuff now and before you need it,
So there is more buying going on now, which pushes
up the prices, which creates the inflation. And similarly, if
people are scared about bonds and they sell bonds and
the rates go up, then that has an effect on
the economy because the rates on the bond matter that
(13:17):
much to the economy. So if you actually say there's
a recession. It does matter. That said, I think the
experience of the last ten twenty years, and particularly the
experience of Biden, does suggest that it might not matter
that much. The hard data is fairly clear that there
(13:38):
wasn't an aggregate recession under Joe Biden. There were two
successive quarters of very slight declines in GDP growth. I
know very few people who really think that that was
a true recession, people who do economics for living that said,
you only need to see what happened in the election,
(13:59):
You only need to take the slightest vibe just to
keep your eyes open as you walk down the streets.
Anywhere in this country, it felt like a recession for
a huge proportion of people, and they acted accordingly.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Do you think that George Soros would say that us
having this conversation is an example of reflexivity that by
us talking about the sort of zeitgeist feeling that there
is a recession or could be a recession soon, is
likely to feed into it.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yes, I mean, that's always the accusation made against any
of us in the media, but there's some degree of
truth to it. One of the standard things politicians say
when oppositions say the economy is terrible, is you're talking
down the economy. The economy would be fine if you
wouldn't stop saying nasty things about it. There is a
degree of truth to that. I don't think you or
(14:52):
I having this conversation is really going to make people
sell all their stock portfolios and lock up their factory.
But George Soros would definitely say that the zeitsgeist, the
broader sentiment, the more and more people talk about these
things that, yes, that can create the perceptions of reality
(15:13):
can change the actual reality.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
John, thank you very much, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.
This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited
by Aaron Edwards, Tracy Sanielson, and Mollie Smith. It was
fact checked by Adriana Tapia and mixed and sound designed
by Alex Sagura. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our
senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our deputy executive producer is
(15:43):
Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster. Bor Sage
Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcast. If you liked this episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take. Wherever
you listen to podcasts, it helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
With on again, off again tariffs, renewed inflation concerns, and
turbulence in financial markets, there's a question on everyone's mind.
Are we headed for a recession? As early as last week,
Goldman Sachs was saying it was more likely than not.
So is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond, who went
on Fox Business after the first round of President Trump's
(00:31):
reciprocal tariffs on China went into effect.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Do you personally expect a recession?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I am going to defer to my economousness point, but
I think probably that's a likely outcome.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But then Trump paused some of his tariffs, and Goldman
Sachs rescinded its recession forecast. On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair
Jerome Powell shared the Fed's economic outlook.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Despite heightened uncertainty and downside risks, the US economy is
still in a solid position. The labor market is at
or near maximum employment, Inflation has come down a great deal,
but is still running a bit above our two percent objective.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Powell also shared that early data suggests that GDP growth
has slowed but not reversed. Still, consumer sentiment is it
nearly record lows? And all over social media everything seems
to be a recession indicator, subtle signs people notice in
their daily lives suggesting we could be on the brink
of a downturn.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You want to know the craziest recession indicator I saw
today a bagel shop was advertising free water phase.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Sixty percent of general admission ticket buyers at Coachella used
buy now, pay later to finance their tickets, And ladies
and gentlemen, some of these are more serious than others.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Here are my recession indicators. Katie Perry going to space.
Flash mobs are back.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
I saw one in Grand Central the other day and
I said, that's a bad sign for the times.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The general takeaway is the vibes are off, so are
we headed for recession? How will we know if we
get there? And how much does that label really matter?
I'm David Gera and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News Today. On the show, John Authurs, Bloomberg Senior
Markets editor and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, will help
(02:15):
us parse the official and unofficial recession indicators and understand
what lies ahead. John, a basic question to start right
out at econ one oh one. What is a recession?
Define it for me.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
It's a more complicated question than you think. A recession
is when not only does growth slow down, but the
size of the economy actually contracts, which doesn't happen that often.
The most common way to measure that is through gross
domestic product. The most obvious symptom of it is unemployment.
(02:53):
The standard shorthands definition is two successive quarters of negative
GDP growth, But that's a shorthand definition. Ultimately, it's the
pot of Stuart's definition of pornography. I know it when
I see it. That's a Supreme Court quotation I've just
given you there. But generally speaking, if you have to
(03:14):
question whether you're in a recession, you probably aren't. And
if you are, you know all about it.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Who effectively knows it when they see it? I gather
the National Bureau of Economic Research plays an outsize role
here in determining whether or not we are, in fact
in a recession.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes, so the default definition of a recession in the
US is when the NBER says, so, you know, big
group of very good academic economists and the lots of
government backing behind them, and they take many things into account. Obviously, unemployment,
(03:49):
gross domestic product mattering more than anything else. The big
problem with the NBR approach for the purposes of history,
for the purposes of analyzing data looking back to see
what happens during recessions, it's brilliant. In real time, it's
close to useless, because it's of the nature of a
recession that it needs to go on for a while,
(04:11):
a matter of months before you're sure it's a recession.
If you wait until the NBER announces that we are
indeed in a recession, it's almost certainly too late if
you're a business making a decision, or particularly if you're
an investor choosing about the stock market. So my favorite
example is two thousand and eight, year of the global
financial crisis. The NBR didn't make that announcement until the
(04:34):
first of December, by which point Lehman Brothers had gone bankrupt.
The stock market had dropped almost fifty percent. At that point.
From the point of view of decisions in the here
and now, the NBER is not helpful for looking back.
For doing analysis, it's the gold standard.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think there are other groups who move faster and
here I'm thinking about economists at the big financial firms.
Who's saying that we are headed for a recession right now,
at this moment in time in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Five naming names is very few people are saying there's
one hundred percent chance of a recession, which is interesting
because two years ago quite a few people were saying
that and it didn't happen. More or less, everybody on
the street has formally raised their probability of a recession
in the wake of particularly the Liberation Day tariffs. But
(05:22):
just the sheer uncertainty that the tariff environment causes makes
it that much more likely that the economy will slow down.
The thing that's fascinating here is the soft data versus
the hard data. This is the sentiment data. Yeah, sentiment data,
but some of it's pretty practical sentiments. So the ism
supply Manager's survey is asking you, are your prices you're
(05:44):
having to pay going up or going down? Are you
building your own inventory or reducing it, etc. So it's
a survey and it includes some sentiment, but it's not
purely sentimental. Now, the soft data suggests we're already in
a the way that confidence of small businesses, the confidence
of consumers has dropped in the last few months has
(06:08):
never happened before unless we've subsequently been in a recession.
That said, the hard data that the last unemployment numbers
were fine and inflation is coming down nicely. The hard
data is still basically the technical terms might possibly be
mid cycle slow down, but basically no particular reason from
(06:28):
the most important data to think that we are already
in a recession. This is primarily about the amazing goings
on about trade policy, which we all know about by
this point, and the way people are reacting to them,
and how those reactions are changing their decisions in real time.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I'm curious as you look at sort of what the
banks are saying about the probability of a recession and
what they're actually doing, how they're positioning themselves. Is there
any sort of divide there.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
On the banks. I don't see that much in the
way of true retrenchment already by the banks. I don't
think somebody like Jamie Diamond is as sanguine as he
was unless he means it. You don't talk down the
economy if you're somebody like that, unless you really believe
it's necessary and responsible to do so. Jamie DIMIs had
(07:19):
an exciting and checkered career, but he doesn't you know,
he doesn't do alarmism. So I'm most interested in the
next couple of weeks when we hear from the companies
that make things, and particularly obviously to think the companies
that import and exports a lot of actual stuff rather
than services, and that's when we'll really get an idea.
But I do believe the banks when they say they're
(07:40):
bracing for tougher times.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Wall Street economists have updated their forecasts, and people who
play the prediction markets like Polymarket, are weighing in what
they expect and some of John's top recession indicators. After
the break, I'm speaking with John Arthurs. He's a senior
(08:05):
markets editor at Bloomberg and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
You wrote about this in your column that the betting
markets and what those betting on the markets are telling
you about their sense of the likelihood of a recession.
What are you seeing when you look at polymarket and.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
The like Polymarket, which during the election, you remember, was
accused not totally fairly of being somewhat right wing or
pro Trump biased, saw a chance of a recession of
somewhat under twenty percent at the beginning of the year,
which was a little on the bearish side. It got
(08:40):
over sixty percent before Trump pulled back on the main
reciprocal tariffs the ninety day pause. It's still at this
point over fifty percent that we have a recession by
the end of this year, which needs to be triggered
by the NBER saying so, or by two quarters of
GDP being negative, which means means that you shouldn't be
(09:01):
making that bet. You shouldn't be thinking it's that probable
unless you think the recession has probably already started. The
people who play on polymarket do have real money at stake,
and that means that you should take them quite seriously.
The mere fact that people think that makes it more
likely that you get a self fulfilling prophecy that people
(09:21):
are just their behavior accordingly spend less and you get
a recession.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
John, we've been talking about the statistics, the data professional
economists used to determine if there is a recession or
there's likely to be one. Let's talk about some of
the unofficial indicators that could give us a sense of
where the economy is right now and where it's headed.
Are there any that you look to maybe softer signs
that the vibes are off in the economy.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
In terms of the numbers, I look at things that
do bother me somewhat. FedEx's share price has been doing
very badly. Significance of that is, obviously if there is
a purer play on globalization and on level of economic
activity than FedEx. I can't really think what it is.
And the fact that its share price is going down
(10:05):
isn't all top down globalization is in trouble. Better gets
out of FedEx. It's people looking at their numbers and
looking at what the company is saying and thinking they'd
better get out. And by the way, that implies the
economy is slowing down. That one does actually concern me
quite a bit. Another measure that isn't fool proof, but
(10:26):
again because so many real people are playing with real
money in a way that can have self fulfilling consequences,
is the metals market. The ratio of gold to copper,
the amount of copper you could buy with an ounce
of gold, has never been higher. Copper is basically something
(10:47):
you buy when the economy is doing well, particularly when
China is electrifying and building stuff, or when people are
building lots of cars and houses. Gold is something you
buy when you're worried, when you can't think of anything
better to do with your money than put it in
the shiny metal and it'll be safe. So I take
that pretty seriously as an indicator that things aren't good.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
As you look at all of the data, hard and soft,
where are you on this question of whether or not
we are in a recession or headed for one?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
This is the agonizing part of it. It really does
depend on trade. If tariffs on China stay at about
one hundred and forty percent for any length of time,
there has to be a recession. I don't see how
there cannot be. The latest World Trade Organization estimates are that,
assuming these level of tariffs, imports to the US from
(11:38):
China are going to be down seventy percent. If you
think how important those imports are, there's no way you
can source that adequately from anybody else. In the very
short term. It will mean shortages, it will mean factories
having to go on pause. If we really stick with
the tariffs that's currently laid out, there will be a recession.
(12:01):
I would be astonished if there wasn't. My best guess
as to where trade policy is going to go, is
that it's going to do enough damage that we will
fall into something the NBAR calls a recession by the
end of this year.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Here's a big think question. I'm curious how much naming
a recession a recession matters. So, going back to what
you said at the top, you know, when you see it,
if people are feeling economic hardship, they know the reality
of the economy today themselves. Does it matter if we're
technically labeling something a recession or not.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It probably does a little because this is a concept
from George Soros, the hedge fund manager. He bases his
whole investments approach around reflexivity, which is his idea that
markets can create their own reality. So in terms of information,
if you think prices are going to go up, you
(12:57):
go out and buy stuff now and before you need it,
So there is more buying going on now, which pushes
up the prices, which creates the inflation. And similarly, if
people are scared about bonds and they sell bonds and
the rates go up, then that has an effect on
the economy because the rates on the bond matter that
(13:17):
much to the economy. So if you actually say there's
a recession. It does matter. That said, I think the
experience of the last ten twenty years, and particularly the
experience of Biden, does suggest that it might not matter
that much. The hard data is fairly clear that there
(13:38):
wasn't an aggregate recession under Joe Biden. There were two
successive quarters of very slight declines in GDP growth. I
know very few people who really think that that was
a true recession, people who do economics for living that said,
you only need to see what happened in the election,
(13:59):
You only need to take the slightest vibe just to
keep your eyes open as you walk down the streets.
Anywhere in this country, it felt like a recession for
a huge proportion of people, and they acted accordingly.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Do you think that George Soros would say that us
having this conversation is an example of reflexivity that by
us talking about the sort of zeitgeist feeling that there
is a recession or could be a recession soon, is
likely to feed into it.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yes, I mean, that's always the accusation made against any
of us in the media, but there's some degree of
truth to it. One of the standard things politicians say
when oppositions say the economy is terrible, is you're talking
down the economy. The economy would be fine if you
wouldn't stop saying nasty things about it. There is a
degree of truth to that. I don't think you or
(14:52):
I having this conversation is really going to make people
sell all their stock portfolios and lock up their factory.
But George Soros would definitely say that the zeitsgeist, the
broader sentiment, the more and more people talk about these
things that, yes, that can create the perceptions of reality
(15:13):
can change the actual reality.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
John, thank you very much, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.
This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited
by Aaron Edwards, Tracy Sanielson, and Mollie Smith. It was
fact checked by Adriana Tapia and mixed and sound designed
by Alex Sagura. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our
senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our deputy executive producer is
(15:43):
Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster. Bor Sage
Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcast. If you liked this episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take. Wherever
you listen to podcasts, it helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.
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