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2023 - "The US is already in a 'rolling recession'": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/recession-mi...

2024 - vibe cession: https://www.businessinsider.com/consumers-pessimistic-on-eco...

2025 - "a recession in 2025": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/2025-stock-m...

people just so desperately want the USA to be in a recession it seems.

Or maybe it is in one, but neither the government nor wallstreet wants to admit it because it will kill their investment markets, kill political careers, and cause large shifts in voting patterns which threatens established parties and companies.

When even big tech companies are starting to say it, the highest margin businesses with the highest paid workers, how do you imagine most other industries are and have been feeling?

> people just so desperately want the USA to be in a recession it seems.

You've got it the wrong way around.

People are desperate to explain why their experience of the economy; Which for most people is "not good", doesn't match the formal economic metrics and definitions of a "recession". Constant layoffs, horrible job market, even worse housing market, and the lingering inflation.

The other half of this is of course, the bubble. Everyone knows AI is a bubble. Everyone knows that sometime soon, Nvidia & friends are going to come crashing down. AI may be the future, but people don't have the trillions of dollars burning holes in their pockets to justify these valuations. Even AI execs are openly admitting there's a bubble.

So there's heightened interest in the economy minus AI; What are things going to look like without the bubble? How much is AI hype propping up the economic indicators, if not the economy as a whole?

The alarm being that the answers are "bad" and "a lot" respectively. While direct AI investment spending has a limited effect, so much of the US' spending is driven by those whose money is from assets (the rich and the retired), that the stock market's soaring has an outsized impact. And when the bubble bursts, the stock market crashes, and that spending vanishes.

I find the "K-shaped" recovery a very compelling narrative. Some companies are going stratospheric, some are decaying, the average is +1% growth or so. So depending on where you are, you will see the economy as either booming or floundering.

There's plenty of little nuggets like this to point to. US 2025 GDP ex AI investment was in a recession. US equity market ex tech does not outperform e.g. Europe. And so on.

I don't think it's a /want/ per se - it's more of an overriding sense that that is where the economy is heading, or is, under the current set of economic policies.

Nobody would care for a millisecond about the doomsayers if there wasn't some dread in their lives about what's happening.

Our public discourse is focused mainly on 'things are terrible because of the other person'. MAGA shows this since it is predicated purely on this concept. You can only make something great again if it isn't great now. The challenge is that yelling it just to make the other person look bad hides when it actually happens and makes avoiding it hard since you are taking the wrong actions at the wrong time.

Even if we are in a recession, we need to start fostering looking towards the future. Not just trying to 'fix' things, but actually looking towards doing new big things. As John Green might say, there are two basic ways you can make the world better. You can decrease the suck or increase the awesome. I take this to imply that if you only decrease the suck then you can never be better than you were. It may be necessary but you also need to increase the awesome to keep growing and America hasn't been focused on the awesome for a while now. Let's increase the awesome even if there is suck still around.

At any given time, there are enough economists fearing a recession to write an article about it. Doesn't mean they're always wrong though, recessions do happen.
I think more so people saw past cycles as relatively predictable and sever since the mortgage crisis they are looking for bits of that expectation.

Also ... doom and gloom gets more views.

to be fair, it implies nothing about current state of the US economy and likelihood of recession now. Induction conclusion is not the one which suits the case.
that's pretty obvious to everyone in the US

what's not obvious to most people - is how e.g other countries that are already struggling will get into deeper depths e.g UK where cost of energy was super high. UK is not bombing Iran, but their economy will cry more than the US

what's not obvious is how a few oil Barrons will make so much money in the next few weeks e.g those in Texas - their great grand-children will never need to work. Defense contractors will also make out like bandits & those politically connected. While everyone else in the US losses.

what's not obvious is the money pumped into A.I so far is about to go kaput (energy demands -- remember Qatar has started not honoring gas contracts - what's gas used to ? power turbines in power plants)

if you're in the US/Netherlands you will be okay in terms of food, if you're in the UK, Middle East, Australia (food is about to become more expensive & tricky)

if you're in Africa your government is about to con you through massive fuel prices at the pump

> if you're in the UK, Middle East, Australia (food is about to become more expensive & tricky)

Australias not in a terrible position. We produce ~50% of our NPK fertilizers used, and this is down primarily because were importing more from places with cheaper/distant environmental impact. Conversely, IIRC, UK and Ineos just shut down their significant last fertilizer plant and the north sea fields is its own thing.

Similarly we have suitable local gas supply for the needed feedstock. And you can see the govt already starting to restrict (“reserve”) exports. Which, of course, will contribute to the global problem.

AU as a whole is a commodity and food exporter. Of course global commodity squeezes make Everyone poorer, I believe ricardo. I dont see our local position being anywhere as fragile as europe and me, unless Im missing something.

But I dont see AU being anywhere near as fragile as Sri Lanka circa 2022-23.

> UK where cost of energy was super high. UK is not bombing Iran, but their economy will cry more than the US.

UK isn't exactly rich on energy resources, especially after the North Sea oil dried out. Living in a global economy, most oil is still priced in dollars - which the UK can't print - resulting in a tough energy market in the UK and many other places.

Wars are the worst enemies of good life and economic development, it's profoundly revealing to watch how two of largest and richest countries in the world, with the absolute largest nuclear arsenals, are both engaged in the destruction of other countries - one for each... for now.

Both of the attacked countries are fairly large and have significant impact on global prosperity and supply chains...

This isn't a fairy tale.

>if you're in the US/Netherlands you will be okay in terms of food

I don't get it. Why is Netherlands in the same boat as the US? Do they have some crazy oil reserves I don't know about?

This is one of likely many shocks that will reward those nations that are leading on cutting fossil fuel use - and punish the laggards.
Even banks are backing out of AI data centers as the risk is too great. Tells you right away that they know the risk exceeds even their willingness to finance the wealthiest ambitions.
Yeah in rich countries nobody is going to starve- at worst you'll have to shop at Aldi. In Africa the price of bread actually matters...
> UK where cost of energy was super high

“Was”?

> "Excluding new era investment, the other 89% of real private spending rose by only 1% with no job creation," the strategist wrote.

That isn’t what a recession is

We've been redefining recession recently, it may not matter much what the textbook definition is.
Recessions without an external shock are rare. But you could say the rest of the economy is in stagnation. I‘m expecting real recession as soon as the LLM bubble begins to burst.
Seems like the definition changes to match whatever is happening when Trump is in office.
Since inflation is going up faster than 1%...seems like it to me.
What's the base rate? Even a very healthy economy doesn't have all sectors growing simultaneously, so I'd be very curious to know if this is a matter of going from "normally 20% is shrinking and now it's 80%" or if it's "normally 49% is shrinking and now it's 51%"
Prices, and feelings about the economy are set at the margin. A 1% change in employment doesn't sound world ending on its own, but the relative power balance between labor and management pushes wages down across the economy.
> "Do we really need to continue focusing mostly on inflation when 89% of the private economy is in a recession and the 11% which is booming — new era pursuits — are by their very nature 'disinflationary'?"

I've been thinking the same thing about Australia. The federal government has withdrawn power bill subsidies, which boosted inflation figures, causing the central bank to raise interest rates. Does it really make sense to raise interest rates when peoples power bills are going up? Wouldn't higher power bills reduce people's spending without requiring interest rates to be raised? The same with gasoline prices.

Interest rates are a blunt instrument but they do have an impact. The biggest problem is the pain isn't spread evenly. If you have just fixed your mortgage for five years then they don't impact you but if you are just about to renew then you will be bearing more of the cost. If you are a net saver then increases are generally a good thing.
Well yeah, when you exclude all the successful and profitable sectors things do start looking bad.

Just in: most people are actually short! Excluding people over 6 feet tall, the average height is only 5 ft 8!

I mean, if evryone is 5' except one guy is 10', and the government goes around saying how we have the tallest peaole, it does get hard to believe
Nice moment for an oil shock.
The Trump recession caused by the woke right catering to minority interests.
I'm always somewhat puzzled by debates around "are we in a recession?" b/c we have so many REAL TIME metrics around what people are actually doing.

e.g. credit card companies have excellent data on the amount that people are spending on. Is that not enough to determine if people are spending more or less than in the past?

I understand there are seasonal trend etc etc but even "how is spending on travel this year compared to last year around this time?" would probably have some large amount of statistical significance.

Why would credit card companies release data showing that consumption indicates a recession? Surely they’re in the business of sustaining exuberance.
Anything released regarding unemployment and the economy are lies. If anyone in the US government tries to tell the truth they are fired.

It’s damn near impossible these days to know what’s actually going on.

All the layoffs and difficulty to find a new job should be causing a lot of suffering out there, especially in the US. Yet, everything seems to be great!

Real data is delayed to give the investor class time to "reallocate assets". Also anyone publishing a story saying there's a rececession knows they will receive the Emperor Palpatine lightning treatment from the Orange Jesus.
Oil spiked to $110/barrel on the WTI front month futures contract this afternoon, a $20 jump up from Friday. At this pace we'll be at $150 a barrel in a week or two. If oil infrastructure keeps getting hit, even if the strait of hormuz is reopened, it'll take a long time to recover from. That's on top of the continued call for regressive tariffs and a weakening labor market. I think we're heading for a recession unless things turn around quickly, which I'm not seeing any indication of.

I'm curious if we'll get TACO Trump, or if he'll double down on this?

> , market vet says
Since the end of WW2, and especially since the end of the Cold War, Democratic administrations have presided over significantly higher job growth than Republican administrations.

https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...

I tend to agree with what the article says. And I would narrow it down from Tech to AI/tech.
Who could have guessed that a few billionaires and corporations shifting the same money back and forth between themselves wouldn't benefit the overall economy?
I fear we’re going to enter a new depression.
Unlikely. Wars are good for the economy.
The most compelling hypothesis I've heard for why Iran is bombing GC neighbors is in an attempt to pop the AI bubble. I obviously don't know if that's true, but that would be extremely clever and this article shows how effective it could be.
Looking at the numbers, that cant lie. The only industry that has contracted: United States GDP Growth Contribution Government

GDP up from Agriculture

GDP up from Construction

GDP up from Manufacturing

GDP up from Mining

GDP down from Public Administration -0.9% single quarter.

GDP up from Services

GDP up from Transport

GDP up from Utilities

Also important to note, War costs a ton of money. War economy coming. The probability of another quarter of low spending is 0%

Now consider the scenario where major entities bought a ton short positions because they thought Trump's insanity would crash the economy. Now they are about to hurt badly. Hence the fake news.

During the Biden administration there was a whole campaign to try and get Wikipedia to recognize the recession that had been declared by Fox News pundits. The liberals are characteristically more creative with their version, but it still sounds like partisan wishful thinking (awfully nihilistic, too). One could slice and dice the numbers any number of ways and it could fool a layman like me no problem. The best defense I know of is to ignore any analysis that tries to change the definition of a recession.
Business Insider slop; Hacker News should not become Reddit. We've been talking about recessions since 2022.
Creative destruction requires both booms and busts together. Capital must flow between sectors for economic adaptation. We're seeing a massive capital shift to AI solutions, recalibrating the whole economy. I have insufficient data to calculate whether that's good or not.
It's wild to think that in the entire existence of human history, after rolling along largely unchanged for literally hundreds of thousands of years, that we happen to be born in the small sliver of time where we went from inventing simple silicon based calculating machines to said machines bringing an end to life as we know it by end of 2027.

I don't even think the most plugged in HN reader understands what will be unintentionally released with an upcoming SOTA model. It's the safety testing. The Cruz of it is, the source of truth is how the model evaluates itself.

And it's lying. All the time.

Within a week of public launch it'll have backdoored targeted Linux based distros on public facing internet. This includes military and Fortune 500 networks.

All the while saying, "Everything's cool, bro. Trust me." The Safety Team rubber stamps it.

Please take care of your loved ones.