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Recession Ledger

An independent record of the downturn that began in 2008 and the years after it. Every forecast here is dated, and checked at the foot of its page.

Subject

Government and media

Deficits, debt, and how the news about them is made.

The politics of the downturn: the national debt by presidency, the fortunes made in the pandemic, the wars argued for in leaked memos, and the week the phrase “fake news” changed hands. These are the pages on which the original arguments were most partisan, and they are kept with that register and without its excesses.

Where a claim was later tested by an inquiry or a court, the later note says what it found.

6 essays, 2012โ€“2021

20211 essay

  1. The tax-and-vaccinate plan may be the straw that breaks the camel's back: shortages, ports and stagflation in September 2021

20201 essay

  1. The coronacrisis turns the buyback billionaires into the trillion-dollar dozen

20172 essays

  1. More fake news: how honest photographs were used to shrink an inauguration crowd

  2. Fake news: the establishment media devours itself over the dossier

20161 essay

  1. Wikileaks and Syria: what the Clinton email archive said about Libya, Iran and Israel

20121 essay

  1. Deficits, debts and Democrats versus Republicans: the US national debt by year and by president