but then the context is a discussion about recent layoffs

That is the game, figuring out what pain affects the decision makers personally.

They apparently don't worry much about stocks. Bonds they care more about (I'd guess their personal wealth is mostly there). Sooner or later they'll probably do something (or bigger somethings).

Real estate is the big question. Will they let it really crash or not?

nope it's 100% the boomers up to their usual antics /s

> high inflation triggering consumers into savings mode

Huh? The rational response to inflation is to spend. The only thing that inflation triggered, vis-a-vis saving, was a shift from cash and bonds to stocks and real estate.

The Fed has been pushing ultra-low interest rates for a long time, which has gotten businesses to borrow tons of money and expand in ways that they never could have done organically. At the same time, the combination of COVID and the supply chain shortage caused prices to spike. Unemployment is near an all-time low: easy money has made it easy to expand companies. Companies have decided to fight against lowering their prices tooth and nail regardless of how much less it now costs to ship product. At the same time, boomers are cycling out of the job market and none of the subsequent generations have enough population to replace them all.

Remember the press releases that stated that Biden intended to hire 80K new IRS workers over the next 10 years? The IRS is predicted to lose 50K workers over the next 5 years due to retirements.

Most companies have refused to invest in employees and refuse to have sensible plans to reward employees for their allegiance. The easiest and most painless way for most employees to get the pay raise they deserve is to find another job. Most employees realize that they have options and are willing to take the right job rather than the first job.

And since spending habits usually don't change if you're making more money, most people have more money to spend and companies are willing to get their piece of that pie. Combine that with OPEC cutting production and the war in Ukraine, and we've now got relatively high inflation. The inflation is real. The fed rate hikes are artificial. We've needed a serious upward adjustment in wages for quite some time, at least until people stop pretending that government is the root of all evil and there's a place for a conversation about how much housing costs.