by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
Labor Day weekend is over, and the election is just over two months away. Is the U.S. economy in a recession as election season enters full swing?
There’s a mountain of data suggesting the answer is yes, or if we’re not in a recession, we soon will be. We’ll explore this data below but let’s begin with the (supposedly) most powerful force in the U.S. economy — the Federal Reserve.
On Aug. 23, Fed Chair Jay Powell gave an address to the annual Federal Reserve conference held at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This was one of Powell’s most important speeches ever for two reasons.
First, he not only pivoted to interest rate cuts (after Wall Street having been wrong about the pivot timing for two years), but more significantly he pivoted from concern about inflation to concern about unemployment.