Will there be a recession in 2022?, it's International Women's Day: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Will there be a recession in 2022?
Experts say the odds are rising, as economics reporter Paul Davidson explains. Plus, more evacuation routes may open up in Ukraine, reporter Jordan Mendoza looks at what's next for surging gas prices, it's International Women's Day and Apple hosts an online event for new products.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Tuesday, the 8th of March 2022. Today, whether we should expect a recession later this year, plus potentially more evacuation routes out of Ukraine, and more.
Here are some of the top headlines:
- The Supreme Court has rejected Republican efforts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to block state ordered congressional districting plans. Justices are allowing maps selected by each state's Supreme Court to be in effect for this year's elections. Those maps are more favorable to Democrats than the ones drawn by the state's legislatures.
- Israel's military says it has demolished the homes of two Palestinians accused of a deadly shooting attack in the occupied West Bank last year the men are accused of killing a Jewish seminary student and wounding to others.
- And Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley has been banned for at least the upcoming NFL season for betting on games. An NFL investigation found he placed bets last season after announcing he was stepping away from the team to focus on his mental wellbeing.
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The US economy is still climbing out of the COVID-19 led downturn. A strong job market is bringing it up to speed, but experts are now raising the odds of an impending recession. And Economic Reporter Paul Davidson says experts warn it could come this year.
Paul Davidson:
The odds are there's not going to be a recession. Really economists look out, say a year or a little over a year, and probably you could say late 2022 might be within that timeframe. The odds are not, but these are all differences in odds, right? I mean, a couple of economists told me the odds of ad recession they had it at 15%, and now one has it at 30 and another has it at 25. But anytime odds increase, it's noteworthy. It could mean that there will be, certainly if you start getting sanctions on Russia's oil exports and oil and gas prices rise much higher. I mean, energy prices just are a big factor. When people have to pay that much out of their pocket for gas prices and to fill up every couple of weeks, it causes them to pull back on other spending. That increases inflation and then it could get the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more, which poses other issues.
One economist, Joe LaVorgna, was observing that, I guess I believe since 1970, anytime you have oil prices that are up 90% over the past year, either we were in a recession or about to enter a recession. So that goes to what I was just saying, that it just becomes a burden on the consumer. Consumer spending makes up 70% of the economy. So if the consumer's going to spend more of their income on gas and as a result spend less on other stuff, you're hitting 70% of the economy. That's one mechanism, channel by which you can get a recession. The other channel is the fed needs to respond to inflation. And if the fed has to raise interest rates too sharply, that can cause inflation, because the home that you buy, your credit card bills, your auto loan, all that gets more expensive, and it also is not such a great thing for the stock market. So fed rate hikes in and of themselves can cause a recession.
Taylor Wilson:
You can find a link to Paul's full story in today's episode description.
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The Hague heard arguments yesterday about whether Russia is committing war crimes in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Officials pleaded with the International Court of Justice to order a stop to the invasion. Russia decided not to attend the hearing, but Ukrainian representative, Anton Korynevych, urged action.
Anton Korynevych:
The fact that Russia's seats are empty speaks loudly. They are not here in this court of law. They are on a battlefield, waging aggressive war against my country. My message to Russia is this, let us settle our dispute like civilized nations. Lay down your arms and put forward your evidence.
Taylor Wilson:
Jonathan Gimblett, a member of Ukraine's legal team, said Russia's tactics are reminiscent of medieval siege warfare. Russia supposed ceasefire in parts of the country, including the capital of Kyiv, could start this morning. But there's debate between Russia and Ukraine about which routes civilians will be allowed to use to evacuate. A previous Russian plan pointed routes toward Russia or Russian ally, Belarus. Ukraine has instead proposed routes to Western regions of the country, where there is little to no shelling compared to Eastern Ukraine. Cities in that region, like the port of Mariupol are getting dangerously low on food and medicine. Around half the city's population wants to flee, but continue to wait for safer evacuation routes. Along with supply shortages, cell phone networks are also down there.
In Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, heavy Russian shelling continues to slam apartment buildings. And in the capital of Kyiv, Russian forces have largely been unable to penetrate the city, though much of Russia's focus has remained on smaller cities that are easier to capture. In Kyiv soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city. Some are up to two-stories high with heavy concrete and sandbags, though others look more haphazard with stacks of books weighing down tires.
Despite few evacuation routes, Ukrainians do continue to flood out of the country. An estimated 1.7 million people have fled with the vast majority, more than a million, in Poland. In Romania where nearly 100,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived, some hotels are putting people up. An 85-year-old grandmother, Nellya Nahorna, at a hotel in Suceava, Romania, put the situation this way. She evacuated after previously fleeing Nazi German invasion of Ukraine in 1941.
Taylor Wilson translating for Nellya Nohorna:
"This war is different because there we had enemies, the fascists. But here, the Russians were brothers."
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As we've been talking about on 5 Things, the national average price for gas has passed $4 a gallon. It's the first time in over a decade that's happened, with gas costs soaring after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But is there any relief in sight? Reporter Jordan Mendoza give some context.
Jordan Mendoza:
Right now the national average is $4.06, and that is a huge increase than what it was about a week ago. According to AAA last week, it was $3.61 and now it's at $4.06. And the national record for averages for a regular gallon of gas is $4.11, and that was in 2008. And it really is indicating that we are going to see that record be broken very quickly, most likely going to be this week. It could be as early as Tuesday, but at some point this week it'll probably get broken.
California, long been known as the most expensive place to get gas, right now the average in California, it's $5.34 for a gallon of gas. The prices over here in California and in Southern California are crazy, but it's just seeing throughout the state. And we was seeing that states around us are also experiencing the same thing. They're not as expensive as California, but you got Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, going through the same thing as well.
I know a lot of it has to do with what's going on in Ukraine right now, what Russia's influence is on oil prices, but really, it's going to keep going on. The mobile app, GasBuddy, the app that people use to see how much gas are like where they're at, they can report what prices are when they go to the pump. They're right now projecting that this isn't going to end for a while. They're projecting that in May the average cost of gas in the country, it's going to be for $4.25. And that's 14 cents more than the national record. And so it's probably going to be going up for a while. They're projecting, because gas prices usually increase in the summer. And not only that, but there's a lot of COVID restrictions that are being loosened. So people are wanting to ... They have the ability to go out more. And so all these factors come in, and gas prices are probably going to be increasing for a while. GasBuddy projects that it'll be over $4 on average for a gallon of gas until November. So this be one of the most expensive years to get gas in US history.
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Taylor Wilson:
Today is International Women's Day. The event aims to celebrate the global, social-economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. And the day calls for action to advance gender equality. This year's theme is Break the Bias. It spotlights both the individual and collective biases against women that fuel gender inequality and asks on the world to call them out. And the campaign is taking to social media, asking people to show their support, posing with their arms crossed and using the hashtags #BreaktheBias and #IWD2022. We've got all kinds of coverage for Women's History Month up on USATODAY.com. That includes this week's This Is America newsletter, which is celebrating Black women in sports. We'll post a link in today's show description.
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Apple will host an online event today and will unveil some new products. Chief among them, an updated version of the iPhone SE, the company's more budget-friendly smartphone. Tech Editor Brett Molina, has more.
Brett Molina:
One of the big reports that we've seen as far as what Apple is expected to introduce at this event is a new model of the iPhone SE, which is its budget-friendly smartphone. According to reports, too, by Bloomberg, Apple's not only planning to reveal a new SE but also an updated iPad Air. We could also see a new Mac model during this event. So there's a lot of interesting stuff obviously that can come here. The last time we heard from Apple of course was in the fall when they rolled out the iPhone 13. And of course that sold very, very well. During their last quarterly call they reported iPhone sales of 71.6 billion, so no surprise there but Apple makes a lot of money off the iPhone.
But this budget iPhone SE will be something really interesting to watch for a couple reasons. First off, we are seeing a lot more budget phones out in the market, I talked about this recently, where you don't have to spend a ton of money to get a smartphone that's really good, really useful, really functional. And, of course, iPhone already has the SE available, they have a model of this. And it's a solid phone. I think it runs for roughly four to $500. Gives you a lot of the good perks of being in the Apple ecosystem. The hardware itself, there are some shortcomings obviously. You only get the one camera on the back. It still processes pretty quickly, but not as quickly. The camera's, like I mentioned, not as good as the newer models, and the battery life probably isn't going to be as good either. But, again, it gets you into the Apple ecosystem and it's a pretty solid phone.
A couple things I'm going to be looking at is what's going to happen with the display. Are we going to stay with that smaller display size, are they going to upgrade the display to match their other models? That's been one signature of the iPhone SE, is that it is stuck with that smaller screen size. Are they going to maintain that? How big of an improvement are we going to see in the cameras? What kind of camera are we going to get, what kind of processing are we going to get again? Again, those are two things that I'm interested in.
Also, of course, all these reports suggest that this is going to be a 5G phone. Which is interesting too, because it's a very easy way to get into 5G. And obviously there are other phones that are going to be around this price point, but to get an iPhone on 5G at what is expected to be an affordable price, that could be a very good option for a lot of people.
Taylor Wilson:
You can hear more from Brett and the world of tech with the Talking Tech Podcast. And you can watch today's Apple event starting at 1:00 PM Eastern, 10:00 AM Pacific on apple.com.
And as always, you can find 5 Things on whatever your favorite podcast app is. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from Paste BN.