Chart of the Day: GDP Plummets in Q2

GDP plummeted 9.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, an annualized rate of 32.9 percent. Just in case that’s not dramatic enough for you, here’s a view of GDP that you don’t normally see:

The reason you seldom see this view of raw GDP is that even big drops barely show up. The 1980 recession is hardly visible and even the 2008 Great Recession looks pretty puny. It’s just a nice, steady march of trendline growth until 2020. The coronavirus recession is the first in 90 years to be so big that it’s visible from outer space, so to speak.

I used to take solace from the fact that this drop was deliberately manufactured, which meant it could be deliberately remedied when the coronavirus was under control. Little did I know that our president had no real interest in controlling the virus and Republicans had no real interest in keeping the country afloat in the meantime. There is going to be tremendous suffering over the next year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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