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The Times

Will Biden Turn Boom Into Bust?

Stetzler
Stetzler
Irwin M. Stelzer
Senior Fellow Emeritus
Irwin M. Stelzer
Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden waves to supporters before speaking at a Drive-In rally at Dallas High School, in Dallas, Pennsylvania, on October 24, 2020.
Caption
Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden waves to supporters before speaking at a Drive-In rally at Dallas High School, in Dallas, Pennsylvania, on October 24, 2020.

Any doubt that the American economy is a resilient beast is in the process of being dispelled. It is in the midst of an unexpectedly sharp recovery. This is not to deny rampant suffering: although jobless claims plunged last week and Amazon continues to gobble up new staff 100,000 at a time, the jobs market remains beset by shutdowns and longer-term trends that have been compressed from several years into a few months. Many small businesses have been shuttered, often permanently.

But the economy is in far better shape than we dared expect only a few months ago. It probably grew in the third quarter at a rate that puts gross domestic product about where it was a year ago, when Covid-19 had not yet.

Read the full article in The Times