President Joe Biden admitted on Tuesday there’s a possibility a “very slight recession” could happen in the near future, though he reiterated that he doesn’t believe it will actually happen in the United States.
“Look, they’ve been saying this now how—every six months, they say this. Every six months, they look down at the next six months and say what’s going to happen. It hasn’t happened yet. It hasn’t—there has—there’s no guarantee that there’s going to be a—I don’t think there will be a recession,” the president said, adding that if there‘ll be one, “it’ll be a very slight recession—that is, we’ll move down slightly.”
“Look what we’ve got done,” Biden boasted. “We passed so much legislation that significantly makes a point ... I mean, there’s so much that’s been accomplished that the idea that there’s something—there’s an automaticity to recession is just not there. They keep—they’ve been predicting this off and on.”
“There’s a risk and real danger of a world recession next year,” Malpass said, kicking off the Monday discussion. He cited slowing economic growth in advanced economies and currency depreciation in many developing countries.
Debt levels are becoming increasingly burdensome in developing countries as their currencies depreciate, Malpass said, adding that “inflation is still a major problem for everyone, but especially for the poor.”
Poverty levels have soared across the globe, Malpass said, noting a “very concerning” 4 percent reduction in the median income.
The World Bank’s latest poverty report estimates that about 70 million people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, the biggest one-year increase since the agency started tracking prosperity levels in 1990.