JPMorgan says the U.S. is probably headed for a recession

And, would you want someone working for you that knows they’re getting canned and might be vindictive to have access to your bits?

I think the layoff w/severance is a better setup. When it happens I don’t need to pretend to work, I can focus on finding the new gig instead.

There might be a sense where that would necessarily be true, if potentially only evident at finer resolution than economic statistics are normally gathered, if the “aggregate economy” curve whose peak marks the beginning of a recession (GDP to a first approximation, but recession is not assessed on a single indicator or simple function) were constrained to being a function that is differentiable (and whose derivative also is) everywhere, but…it’s not. There’s no reason it has to, from expansion, smoothly turn around through a level point to start going down, so that you could assess “heading toward a recession” as where the second derivative as where the second derivative is negative.

(In fact, there isn’t even an actual function, just declared peaks and troughs; between peak and trough is “recession”, between trough and peak is “expansion”, and if you are in one – unless it goes on forever – you are heading for the other. The only nontrivial prediction regarding “heading for” is how soon, not are we.)

>steady you're heading away from a recession

Not quite, but there is certainly only 3 scenarios, just as shown by a graph. It can go up (growth), it can go down (recession), or it can be flat (stagnation).

Fed can just print another 20 trillions. Treasury can mint a special 10T USD coin to payback FED. Nothing needs to give. As long as people have "faith" in USD, the music will continue...but those damn Yuan and Rubbles. Taht we need ro launch another Iraq war with China and Russia. They have WMD that we can blame on and get our boys there with poker cards - a version for the Russian and a version for the Chinese. Surely we can beat them as easily as Iraqis? Ignore Afghan - we always intended to replace Talebans with Talebans while we wash 10T USD for congress money laundry.

The us debt is denominated in usd. Countries in the EU don’t have the same luxury.

Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio never stopped climbing; it peaked at over 200% in 2020. The crisis, meanwhile, was short-lived as the ratio per se was not among the most salient factors.

> This is the first time the US gets challenged on multiple fronts from multiple actors. China, Russia and non-alignment members are all challenging the status quo.

Two blocs are emerging. One is largely unified around shared cultural interests in resilient democracy and defence of human rights. The other is a hodge-podge of malcontents, allies-of-convenience and one strong but largely regional power (i.e. China).

If we look at this as a political struggle then we have to look at the problem-solution ledger to see who holds the advantage.

The US (and the West) have issues with an imbalance of power and wealth, and growing numbers of disillusioned, young voters - this is the problem statement. What is the solution that the non-aligned movement can offer? Worse inequality? Fewer rights? What?

The non-aligned countries have fractuous political bases and are shoring up their systems by cracking down on dissedents, attacking neighbours and attempting to corrupt other nation's foreign policies. No one is lining up to migrate to these countries, no one is holding them up as a beacon of rightousness (outside of the wingnut extremes, of course).

Contrast this to the Cold War. The Soviets held a significant sway over the "International Left". They had answers to the problems of the West. Not good answers, but good enough to sway a lot of students and intelligentsia.

China has no allies of note. Russia is a basket case. The rest of the non-aligned bloc are essentially local dictators trying to keep the pin in their respective grenades. All of them are experiencing the same struggle of either a rapidly aging population with no migration, or a rapidly growing youth who want a better life. For example, China's median age is rising 6 months for every year that passes, and they are a long way from being a sustainable, powerful economy.

These are interesting times in the political sense but unless the West starts kicking a lot of "own goals" - which is very possible but not exactly probable - then the US (and to a lesser extent the EU) will own this century as well.

>This is the first time the US gets challenged on multiple fronts from multiple actors

Laughs in WWII

> This is the first time the US gets challenged on multiple fronts from multiple actors.

Its not even the first time since the end of the Cold War.

> The US dollar is being challenged from multiple fronts and one of them is Crypto. (though also the fact it’s being mismanaged by its own creators is not helping either).

So, I’m just about a half-century old, and since I became politically aware – which was pretty young – I’ve been hearing that exact line (except with something else, usually “Gold”, in place of crypto until recently) continuously that entire time.