Economics

Kyla Scanlon: What's Actually Wrong With the Economy?

Economist and author Kyla Scanlon discusses inflation, economic narratives, and the housing market.

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Kyla Scanlon: What's Actually Wrong With the Economy?

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How's the economy actually doing?

In 2022, economists forecasted that we'd be in a recession by now. Did it ever actually happen, though? Prices got higher, interest rates ticked up, but mass layoffs never really happened and gross domestic product growth chugged on. People mostly weathered the turbulence.

Joining us today to talk about all that and to speculate on what effects former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris' proposals might have on the economy is Kyla Scanlon. She worked as a macroeconomic analyst at Capital Group before founding Bread, a financial education company. She has built a large social media following by teaching finance and economics via YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and TikTok. She recently published her first book In This Economy: How Money and Markets Really Work.

As we came out of the pandemic, we experienced inflation beyond what most millennials have seen in their lifetimes. The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to attempt to achieve a soft landing—using the power of the central bank to cool a hot economy without causing a recession. We start by asking Kyla: "We're in an election year. How do you think voters should perceive the current state of our economy?"

Sources referenced in the conversation:

  1. Financial Times: 2022 prediction of a recession.
  2. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDPC1) | FRED | St. Louis Fed
  3. COVID did not rescue the Armageddonists from underperformance purgatory
  4. Just Asking Questions with Nate Silver
  5. University of Michigan: Consumer Sentiment (UMCSENT) | FRED| St. Louis Fed
  6. 12-month percentage change, Consumer Price Index
  7. FiveThirtyEight: Which Economic Indicators Best Predict Presidential Elections?
  8. Kyla Scanlon: Why We Have a Housing Crisis
  9. Homeownership rates among Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X.
  10. Harris-Walz economic agenda press release
  11. Harris press release about her "$25k downpayment assistance" plan
  12. Kyla Scanlon: The TikTok Girl is Right: Modernity and the 9-to-5