• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Current price of oil as of June 16, 2026

2

Team USA star Ricardo Pepi grew up in a trailer in El Paso—and his parents pawned their car title to fuel his soccer dream. Now, he’s in the World Cup

3

Cursor’s 25-year-old CEO is a former Google intern who just cemented a $60 billion deal with SpaceX

1

Current price of oil as of June 16, 2026

2

Team USA star Ricardo Pepi grew up in a trailer in El Paso—and his parents pawned their car title to fuel his soccer dream. Now, he’s in the World Cup

3

Cursor’s 25-year-old CEO is a former Google intern who just cemented a $60 billion deal with SpaceX
PoliticsJoe Biden

Wall Street buys into Bidenomics, with top economists at Goldman and other banks saying we could really dodge a recession

Paolo Confino
By
Paolo Confino
Paolo Confino
Reporter
Down Arrow Button Icon
Paolo Confino
By
Paolo Confino
Paolo Confino
Reporter
Down Arrow Button Icon
July 5, 2023, 4:17 PM ET
President Joe Biden holds a microphone as he gives a speech.
President Biden and his advisors took a victory lap to tout the accomplishments of “Bidenomics.”Tatos Katopodis—Getty Images
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

President Biden and his surrogates have been taking a victory lap, celebrating the administration’s economic accomplishments and “Bidenomics,” a media invention that the White House claimed for itself this summer. As Biden touts his economic record, bragging rights extend to…a U.S. economy that is rebounding from the pandemic faster than the rest of the developed world; almost $100 billion invested in domestic manufacturing jobs in 2023; inflation rates plummeting from the 9% range to around 4.0%; and a 3.7% unemployment rate that is the lowest since the 1960s.

Recommended Video

Bidenomics, as unveiled by the White House in a speech in Chicago last week, aims to build the country’s economy by strengthening the middle class. Biden himself has offered it as an explicit repudiation of trickle-down economics, which was famously dubbed “Reaganomics” in the 1980s. He’s been making this broad strokes argument since the 2020 campaign trail. In his first address to a joint session of Congress two years ago, he said simply that “trickle-down economics has never worked,” but he has never adopted the media portmanteau about his economic philosophy until now.  

The problem with Bidenomics, it seems, is that it just doesn’t feel good. Economists have theorized about a “richcession,” which only hits the well off, or a “rolling recession,” where different sectors undergo downturns but not the economy as a whole, or even a “non-recession recession.” And the American populace doesn’t seem to like this change from many decades of, well, trickle-down. Voters lay much of the blame at Biden’s feet. Just 34% of the public approves of his handling of the economy, according to an AP poll. The White House notes that the term “Bidenomics” itself isn’t poll tested.  

But now some of Wall Street’s biggest players are echoing the White House’s optimism for a robust economic recovery. 

JPMorgan shared four possible scenarios for a future recession in the U.S. and globally. The most likely, according to the bank, with a 36% chance, is that the U.S. enters a recession at the same time as the rest of the world, meaning that the country’s unusual predicament of high inflation with low unemployment wouldn’t set it up for an atypical recession.  

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs lowered the likelihood of a 12-month recession forecast to 25%, according to remarks from chief economist David Mericle on the bank’s Goldman Sachs Exchanges podcast. Goldman has been lukewarm on the possibility of a recession for several months. Mericle attributed the change in Goldman’s forecast to a rebalancing of the labor market, which has seen inflation ease without growing unemployment as some experts had theorized was the solution to the current crisis of inflation. 

“We’ve seen a big decline in our jobs-workers gap from about 6 million to about 3 million. And so far, it’s been remarkably painless. We haven’t seen any increase in the unemployment rate,” Mericle says. 

Although not all economists are convinced that unemployment and inflation were so closely linked to begin with. Some, like Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Economic Innovation Group, thought it was possible all along to keep the former low while striving to reduce the latter. 

“Inflation has cooled down,” Ozimek told Fortune. “But unemployment hasn’t gone up. Instead, we’ve added 4 million workers to the economy. So we weren’t out of workers—that’s been debunked.”

Ozimek also said that the investment in American manufacturing included in the August 2022 Inflation Reduction Act had some role to play in adding jobs to an already hot labor market. Although it’s too early to draw any definitive conclusions, he points out. 

In an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, Jared Bernstein, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, attributed the success in threading the needle between reducing inflation and low unemployment to the Biden administration’s ability to consider Americans as both consumers and workers. If the administration had just been concerned with American consumption it would have imported cheaper goods from around the globe, Bernstein argues. Instead, it invested in domestic manufacturing to ensure that prices were lowered while people didn’t lose their jobs. 

“Under Bidenomics we don’t look at Americans as 100% consumers full stop. We recognize that they are also workers who depend on domestic production to get good jobs. If all you thought about was consumer spending you’d say, ‘Let me import everything to try and increase the supply and lower the price.’ If you thought about people as consumers but also workers, you’d think about both…We don’t want to hollow out our communities.” 

It’s not out of place, however, to view Bidenomics’ success almost exclusively through the lens of an economic recovery. In an op-ed in Bloomberg Opinion, Matt Yglesias said the new economic doctrine was centered on the simple but meaningful “idea that the government should do everything in its power to make recessions brief and recoveries rapid.” That wasn’t the case even under Obama during the Great Recession, he pointed out, which famously weathered a “jobless recovery” in just the past decade. 

Wall Street’s favorable opinions of Bidenomics are further supported by the absolute bull market in the S&P 500, rising 16.7% over the past six months. 

Subscribe to Fortune Gulf Brief. Every Tuesday, this new newsletter delivers clear-eyed, authoritative intelligence on the deals, decisions, policies, and power shifts shaping one of the world’s most consequential regions, written for the people who need to act on it. Sign up here.
About the Author
Paolo Confino
By Paolo ConfinoReporter

Paolo Confino is a former reporter on Fortune’s global news desk where he covers each day’s most important stories.

See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Politics

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Politics

aidan
AIG7
Cohere CEO on G7 leaders’ choice: sovereign AI or digital serfdom
By Aidan GomezJune 17, 2026
3 hours ago
Doctors and nurses huddle in a hospital hallway
Economystudent loans and debt
Trump’s OBBBA will cap federal loans on July 1. Republicans are going over Trump’s head to save student loans for nurses
By Jacqueline MunisJune 17, 2026
5 hours ago
sb
Personal FinanceSocial Security
‘Social Security is on a collision course toward insolvency,’ watchdog says. It hasn’t been this bad since 1983
By Nick LichtenbergJune 17, 2026
6 hours ago
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei speaking into a microphone.
NewslettersEye on AI
Decision on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models means the U.S. has a licensing regime for frontier AI—it just doesn’t want to admit it
By Jeremy KahnJune 16, 2026
17 hours ago
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
EconomyFederal Reserve
Trump turned the dollar into a foreign policy tool, and now risks undermining the currency’s extraordinary status, think tank says
By Tristan BoveJune 16, 2026
19 hours ago
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Kevin Warsh arrives to his swearing-in ceremony to be the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the East Room of the White House on May 22, 2026 in Washington, DC.
EconomyKevin Warsh
Kevin Warsh’s first Fed test is here: He must navigate hawks ‘on the offensive’ and Wall Street’s hunger for details on regime change
By Eleanor PringleJune 16, 2026
21 hours ago

Most Popular

Current price of oil as of June 16, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of June 16, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJune 16, 2026
1 day ago
Team USA star Ricardo Pepi grew up in a trailer in El Paso—and his parents pawned their car title to fuel his soccer dream. Now, he’s in the World Cup
Success
Team USA star Ricardo Pepi grew up in a trailer in El Paso—and his parents pawned their car title to fuel his soccer dream. Now, he’s in the World Cup
By Preston ForeJune 15, 2026
2 days ago
Cursor’s 25-year-old CEO is a former Google intern who just cemented a $60 billion deal with SpaceX
AI
Cursor’s 25-year-old CEO is a former Google intern who just cemented a $60 billion deal with SpaceX
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJune 16, 2026
24 hours ago
'Work hard, stay loyal, and the system will reward you': the Boomer credo is a Gen X betrayal and a Millennial pipe dream
Success
'Work hard, stay loyal, and the system will reward you': the Boomer credo is a Gen X betrayal and a Millennial pipe dream
By Nick LichtenbergJune 16, 2026
1 day ago
Hundreds of Stanford students walked out of their grad ceremony to protest Google CEO’s commencement speech. It wasn’t all about AI
Big Tech
Hundreds of Stanford students walked out of their grad ceremony to protest Google CEO’s commencement speech. It wasn’t all about AI
By Tristan BoveJune 15, 2026
2 days ago
Current price of oil as of June 15, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of June 15, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJune 15, 2026
2 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.