{"id":84583,"date":"2025-10-17T15:45:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T15:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84583\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T15:45:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T15:45:06","slug":"how-the-k-shaped-recovery-went-pear-shaped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84583\/","title":{"rendered":"How the K-Shaped Recovery Went Pear-Shaped"},"content":{"rendered":"

To get John Authers\u2019 newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2020, as the pandemic brought the global economy to a standstill, debate raged over the shape of the recovery to come. Sitting in front of their home computers, people argued in terms of letters. Would it be V-shaped, with a swift rebound, or more of a U? Was there a risk of the dreaded L, leaving the economy bumping along horizontally for years?<\/p>\n

Then the Twitter personality Ivan the K (@IvantheK), an anonymous figure who describes himself as the \u201cLead Independent Director of Finance Twitter,\u201d laid claim to the \u201cK-shaped recovery.\u201d<\/a> At first, this was little more than a play on his online moniker, but the concept began to take root.<\/p>\n

Peter Atwater<\/a>, an expert in behavioral economics, or the application of group psychology to the economy, liked the idea and began to post warnings that the pandemic was contorting the world ever more into a K-shape<\/a>. Enjoying the upper arm of the K were the white-collar workers who could carry on virtually undisturbed, and even got to do so in more comfort at home, some relocating to charming locales outside the confines of a daily commute. On the lower arm, facing deepening gloom and uncertainty, were blue-collar workers sitting in enforced idleness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To get John Authers\u2019 newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here. In 2020, as the pandemic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,32359,5022,1951,219,866,564,29504,1943,111,139,69,64544,9880,4233,40863,64545],"class_list":["post-84583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-deutsche-bank-ag-registered","tag-economic-policy","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-federal-reserve","tag-food","tag-hsbc-holdings-plc","tag-inflation","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-twitter-inc","tag-view","tag-wall-street","tag-weekend-essay","tag-western-alliance-bancorp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}