‘Probably Close to a 50-50 Chance’ We Had 2nd Straight Quarter of Negative Growth in This Quarter

During an interview aired on Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” Harvard Professor, economist, Director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, and Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton Larry Summers said that he believes there is “probably close to a 50-50 chance, maybe it’s a bit less than that,” that the GDP growth in the second quarter of 2022, which ended Thursday, will be negative and the economy will post a second straight quarter of GDP growth, which would mean that, under some definitions of a recession, the U.S. economy is in a recession.

Summers stated, “Look, David, we’ve got the first quarter numbers in the bank. They are negative for GDP. There are many forecasters who believe that the second quarter, which ended yesterday, also had negative GDP growth. It’s not really the formal definition of a recession, but people often say it’s a recession when you have two quarters of negative GDP growth in a row. And there’s, I think it’s probably close to a 50-50 chance, maybe it’s a bit less than that, that we’ve had two negative quarters in a row.”