The last time the U.S. government partially shutdown, the people who portray experts on television warned of the apocalypse. People would lose their houses, the economy would collapse, and the country would turn into a dystopian nightmare.
Did the sky fall? Hardly. Everything was as normal as it could be, though there was one guy who said he was about to file for bankruptcy because he missed a paycheck for two weeks.
Six years later, the same narrative is being pushed, but even harder because Donald Trump is president. Everyone is warning about how society is tearing apart at the seams because the trash is piling up at national parks and the feds can’t strongarm little girls holding lemonade stands.
But is the nation crumbling? Again, hardly.
You can’t tell that to JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who thinks the shutdown will bring growth to zero.
Talking to reporters on a media call, Dimon warned that the longer the shutdown goes on, the bigger the threat can be to the world’s largest economy.
“Someone estimated that if it goes on for the whole quarter, it can reduce growth to zero. We just have to deal with that. It’s more of a political issue than anything else,” he said.
Dimon did say the terrifying word: recession.
“Consumers are in good shape, they’re spending money, they’re saving money, household formation is going up, wages are going up,” Dimon said. “Eventually there will be offsets that may push the economy into recession, we don’t know when that’s going to be.”
The only setback for global financial markets is that industry data will either be delayed or distorted due to the shortage of manpower. Nothing more, nothing less.
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