Economists Announce Economy "Doing Exactly What Economists Said It Wouldn't Do"

The nation's leading economists announced Thursday that the economy is currently doing exactly what every major economic model, forecast, projection, and strongly worded op-ed published over the past eighteen months said it would not, could not, and under no reasonable interpretation of available data should be doing — and that this represents, in the words of Federal Reserve Chair Dominic Assuredly, "a valuable opportunity to update our models."

"The models were wrong," Chair Assuredly told reporters at a press conference held in a room that costs more per hour to rent than most Americans earn in a week. "But they were wrong in ways that are genuinely instructive, and we have already begun the process of building new models that we are confident will be wrong in entirely different and more sophisticated ways."

The announcement came after the Bureau of Economic Statistics released its quarterly report showing that inflation, which economists had declared "effectively tamed" in January, "genuinely tamed" in March, and "tamed to a degree that frankly reflects well on everyone involved" in May, had spent the intervening months doing whatever it wanted.

Markets reacted to the news by doing something unexpected, which analysts described as "unexpected," before revising that description to "a correction," then "a recalibration," then "a healthy expression of underlying volatility," and finally "fine, actually, if you zoom out far enough and squint."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 340 points, then down 280 points, then up 190 points, then sideways in a way that one analyst described as "philosophically interesting," before finishing the day at a number that was different from where it started, which economists confirmed was "how numbers work."

On Main Street — a place economists reference frequently and visit rarely — the reaction was more direct. Gerald Munchin, 54, owner of a hardware store in a mid-sized city that economists describe as "a bellwether community" whenever they need to explain something and "not representative of broader trends" whenever they need to explain something else, said he had stopped reading economic forecasts in 2019.

"They told me things were going great," Munchin said, gesturing at his store, which is doing fine but not great. "I'm not saying they're lying. I'm saying they're describing a different economy than the one I'm in. Maybe there are two economies. Maybe I'm in the wrong one."

Economists confirmed there are, in fact, two economies, and that this is a known phenomenon called a "K-shaped recovery," which they coined in 2020 and which Munchin had not been informed of, possibly because no one told him, or possibly because the letter K does not fully capture the experience of being in the bottom half of it, which is less like a letter and more like a feeling you get when you open your bank statement.

The Federal Reserve responded to the data by doing something with interest rates — the precise nature of which was described in a 47-page statement written in a dialect of English specifically engineered to be understood only by people who already know what it means. Translated into plain language by three independent economists, the statement said either "we are raising rates," "we are holding rates," or "we are watching rates very carefully with our full attention and considerable expertise," depending on which economist you asked, and whether you asked before or after lunch.

Congress held hearings. Several senators asked Chair Assuredly questions that suggested they believed the Federal Reserve controls gas prices, the price of eggs, their constituents' specific feelings about money, and, in one case, the weather. Chair Assuredly answered each question with the patience of someone who has explained this before and knows it will not help.

"The Federal Reserve does not control the price of eggs," Chair Assuredly said, for the fourteenth time in his tenure, in the same measured tone he uses for all fourteen, which is the tone of a man who has made peace with something. He then paused, looked briefly at the ceiling, and added: "Or the weather." Nobody had asked about the weather.

New economic models are expected to be released in the fall, incorporating the latest data, updated assumptions, and what one economist described as "a more humble posture toward the fundamental unknowability of complex adaptive systems," which other economists described as "giving up" and "not giving up, just being realistic," in a debate that has been ongoing since 1776 and shown no signs of resolution.

The economy, reached for comment, did not respond, as it is not a person and cannot speak, a fact that has not stopped approximately 4,000 people on social media from claiming to know exactly what it is thinking.