Dr. Phillip Magness, director of research and education at the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank, shared a screenshot from his Facebook account, showing that the social networking site had “independent fact-checkers” review his July 24 post. , and that they found it to be “partially false”. “We live in an Orwellian hellscape,” Magness wrote Thursday. “Facebook now ‘audits’ anyone who challenges White House puns on recession definition”. Facebook added a notice to the post warning that “people who repeatedly share false information may be moved lower in their News Feed posts to other people who are less likely to see them.” Magness, the director of research and education at the American Institute for Economic Research, took to Twitter to express his dismay. Twitter / @PhilWMagness The correction comes after Biden last week denied the US was in recession, despite new data showing GDP had contracted for a second straight quarter, meeting the long-accepted definition of recession. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the president tried to downplay the troubling report and focus on near-zero unemployment numbers and his administration’s progress on steps to tame rising inflation. “This doesn’t sound like a recession to me,” he said, prompting GOP leaders to accuse the president of “lighting up” the nation, with the Republican National Committee declaring the GDP report indicative of a “Biden recession.” Economist Phillip Magness accused Facebook of being “Orwellian” after his post claiming the US was in recession was fact-checked and found to be partly false. American Institute of Economics Other top administration officials followed Biden’s lead in rejecting the report showing the economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.9 percent, after falling 1.6 percent in the first quarter. “We should avoid a semantic battle,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told reporters last week, adding that “Americans’ biggest concern is inflation” and that they generally feel good about their ability to find and stay employed . The determination of whether the US is technically in a recession is usually made by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which is a private, non-profit research organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A week before the negative GDP report was released, the White House published a preemptive blog post denying that two consecutive quarters of falling GDP was the official definition of a recession. The author of the post argued that “holistic data” such as “the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production and incomes” go into the true definition of a recession. President Biden last week sought to downplay a new report showing GDP contracted for a second straight quarter.AP “Based on these data, it is unlikely that a contraction in GDP in the first quarter of this year – even if followed by another contraction in GDP in the second quarter – would indicate a recession,” the post said. Magness, who has been critical of Biden’s handling of the economy in the past, wrote in a July 27 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he accused the White House of “playing word games” instead of addressing underlying economic problems . “The White House’s attempt to navigate its way around a recession shows the dangers of politicizing economic terms,” he wrote. “Sir. Biden’s economic advisers are trying to buy time by exploiting the otherwise defensible NBER methodology. They hope this will insulate the administration from electoral backlash in the event of a recession.” Magness again took aim at the administration on Twitter on Saturday, accusing the White House and the media of hypocrisy. “Recession. n. 1. 2 straight quarters of negative GDP growth when the media dislikes the president. 2. A vague, holistic, ill-defined situation you’re not allowed to talk about until the NBER decides a year from now, under the premise that the media likes the president,” he mocked. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans described the U.S. economy as poor and about 7 in 10 disapproved of Biden’s economic leadership, according to a June survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. With Post cables
