I was wondering if any of you had anecdotes or ideas you felt weren't really being talked about that provide substantial evidence as to the direction of the economy, whether with recent VC attitudes, behavior of established fintech CEOs, etc.
One of my neighbors works for one of the tech back-end logistics companies, a subsidiary of UPS and HQ'd here in town; he has pointed out that when the semi-trailer traffic goes *up* the economy is doing *well* (... and vice-versa).
Right now, as I sit here typing this from my home office, overlooking the Interstates... the amount of semi-trailer traffic has been reduced. I'm starting to notice empty areas of my local Wal-Mart again, too (e.g. Yogurts / dairy, recently).
So they're trying to suck 'easy money' out of the economy, which means everyone will be looking to conserve cash.
High consumer prices likely will adjust sales downward.
Companies doing 'pre-emptive' layoffs all over the place does not help.
the more disabled cars you see on the side of the freeway the worse the economy is doing.
Previously they did one on Mar 5, 2020 (as Covid numbers explode in the USA) and Oct 10, 2008 (acceleration of the Great Recession).
1) Negative growth in GDP. The United States has seen two quarters of negative growth in GDP. What is a recession but the economy shrinking? However this is not the whole story as unemployment remains historically low and the quality of life for most Americans economically has remained constant or improved. This pattern of negative growth needs to be sustained to be considered a recession but certainly we're on track for one.
2) Inverted yield curve. An inverted yield curve is often an early sign of an upcoming recession and the US yield curve is inverted right now. An inverted yield curve means the price of a US treasury bond that matures sooner is more expensive than a treasury bond that matures later. Under normal circumstances, a bond that matures sooner should be worth more because there is less risk that the government will default on it. This signals that bond traders see more risk in the US economy in the near term than the long term.
3) Raising rates and Quantitative Tightening. High inflation and extremely low unemployment means the Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising the federal funds rate and selling off securities it purchased during quantitative easing. Why is the Federal Reserve doing this? They're legally required to, they have a mandate from Congress to keep inflation and unemployment low. In practice, they target 2% inflation and 5% unemployment (more or less). Inflation has been well above 2% and unemployment has been well below 5% so the choice for the Fed is clear, tighten monetary conditions. This is contrast to the historically low interest rates and monetary conditions of the last 15 or so years. In that time, many businesses were able to spring up or grow quickly as money was cheap. In the worst case when those businesses were running low on funds they could go to lenders and ask for more cash. This time, when they go to lenders they will find they have to be giving a lot more in interest. This makes some of these businesses unprofitable and they will fail. Failing businesses shrinks the economy and causes the Americans who were employed by those businesses to lose their jobs, which means they will have to cut back on expenses which will in turn make other businesses less profitable because they have fewer customers, and so on.
4) Global Conditions. Today, Europe faces a world without Russian natural gas. Many industrial businesses cannot operate without electricity and energy that is generated from this natural gas. In the best case, the removal of Russian gas from the global supply for Europe means that costs will go up for businesses and they will pass this cost on to consumers who will consume less because the price is higher, shrinking their economy. In the worst case, Europe will face energy shortages meaning businesses and factories will simply be unable to operate (not to mention the human cost of being unable to heat homes). In China, the government has been shutting down entire cities in an attempt to restrict the spread of COVID-19. This takes cities filled with millions of people and hundreds to thousands of businesses offline for weeks. For the United States, a world which is worse off buys less from it and trades less with it and in turn makes it worse off.
So does that mean for sure we're going to see another recession? No, these things could change. But if they remain the same for a long time Americans will see less economic activity happening.