Opinion | There’s a reason the U.S. economy soared and others were mediocre
www.washingtonpost.com
Looking around the world, it’s clear why the United States had an economic miracle and most other nations, a mediocre year.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    41·
    8 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    This doesn’t mean everything was perfect, but it’s important to celebrate the economic equivalent of an underdog athlete winning gold.

    The Federal Reserve then hikes interest rates to kill demand, but this typically brings big job losses and a recession.

    Natasha Sarin: Taylor Swift, Janet Yellen and Barbie: The Year of the (Economic) Woman

    It’s the wealth trend that differentiated the United States from the rest of the world and that wasn’t fully understood when experts made their 2023 predictions, according to the JPMorgan analysis by Joseph Lupton and Maia Crook.

    The wealth effect helps explain why Americans have been comfortable doing so much extra splurging on everything from jewelry to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé tickets.

    President Biden enacted an additional $1.9 trillion stimulus in 2021 that kept economic momentum building.

    The original article contains 775 words, the summary contains 131 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
      22·
      8 months ago

      Man is that an awful graphic. Both for it’s godawful design and that the contents are fucking bleak…

    • fubo@lemmy.world
      112·
      8 months ago

      That is not, in fact, the explanation that the article discusses.

      Something more was also at play: In recent years, Americans have grown wealthier, and not just the rich. Households across the income spectrum have seen the largest surge in wealth on record. This was driven mainly by a surge in the U.S. stock market (nearly 60 percent of families now have some stock ownership, generally via retirement funds) and a gigantic rise in home values. The vast majority of homeowners locked in mortgage rates under 5 percent, which insulated them from the Federal Reserve’s painful rate hikes. (Most other countries do not lock in a mortgage rate for 30 years, and this leaves their homeowners far more exposed to interest rate hikes.) Meanwhile, U.S. home values soared. People feel wealthier, even if they haven’t actually sold their homes or stocks. When people feel wealthier, they tend to spend more.