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   From: fire.union.workers@afge.org   
      
   On 30 Sep 2023, Luser Trump  posted some   
   news:ufa14j$147fi$1@dont-email.me:   
      
   > Simple.  Fire all the union workers.   
      
   (Bloomberg) -- When everyone expects a soft landing, brace for impact.   
   That’s the lesson of recent economic history — and it’s an uncomfortable   
   one for the US right now.   
      
   A summer in which inflation trended lower, jobs remained plentiful and   
   consumers kept spending has bolstered confidence — not least at the   
   Federal Reserve — that the world’s biggest economy will avoid recession.   
      
   A last-minute deal to avoid a government shutdown kicks one immediate risk   
   a little further into the future. But a major auto strike, the resumption   
   of student-loan repayments, and a shutdown that may yet come back after   
   the stop-gap spending deal lapses, could easily shave a percentage point   
   off GDP growth in the fourth quarter.   
      
   Add those shocks to other powerful forces at work on the economy — from   
   dwindling pandemic savings to soaring interest rates and now oil prices   
   too — and the combined impact could be enough to tip the US into a   
   downturn as early as this year.   
      
   Here are six reasons why a recession remains Bloomberg Economics’ base   
   case. They range from the wiring of the human brain and the mechanics of   
   monetary policy, to strikes, higher oil prices and a looming credit   
   squeeze — not to mention the end of Taylor Swift’s concert tour.   
      
   The bottom line: history, and data, suggest the consensus has gotten a   
   little too complacent — just as it did before every US downturn of the   
   past four decades.   
      
   Terminal clients: Use Bloomberg’s BECO function to explore the live models   
   behind Bloomberg Economics research.   
      
   Soft Landing Calls Always Precede Recessions…   
      
   “The most likely outcome is that the economy will move forward toward a   
   soft landing.” So said then-San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen in   
   October 2007, just two months before the Great Recession began. Yellen   
   wasn’t alone in her optimism. With alarming regularity, soft landing calls   
   peak before hard landings hit.   
      
   Why do economists find it so difficult to anticipate recessions? One   
   reason is simply the way forecasting works. It typically assumes that what   
   happens next in the economy will be some kind of extension of what’s   
   already happened — a linear process, in the jargon. But recessions are   
   non-linear events. The human mind isn’t good at thinking about them.   
      
   Here’s an example that focuses on unemployment, a key gauge of the   
   economy’s health. The Fed’s latest forecast is for the jobless rate to   
   edge higher from 3.8% in 2023 to 4.1% in 2024, That’s a continuation of   
   the current trend, and one that would see the US skirting a recession.   
      
   But what if there’s a break in the trend — the type of sudden shift that   
   occurs when the economy goes into a dive? Using a model designed to allow   
   for these nonlinearities, Bloomberg Economics has forecast not just the   
   most likely path for the unemployment rate, but the distribution of risks   
   around that path.   
      
   The key takeaway is that risks are heavily skewed toward higher   
   unemployment.   
      
   …And Fed Hikes Are About to Bite Hard   
      
   “Monetary policy,” Milton Friedman famously said, “operates with long and   
   variable lags.” One subtlety here is that the “variable” can refer not   
   just to differences between one recession and another — but also to   
   different parts of the economy within a single cycle.   
      
   Soft-landing optimists point out that stocks have had a good year,   
   manufacturing is bottoming out and housing reaccelerating. The trouble is,   
   those are the areas that have the shortest lag time from rate hikes to   
   real-world impact.   
      
   For the parts of the economy that matter for making the recession call —   
   above all the labor market — lags are longer, typically 18 to 24 months.   
      
   That means the full force of the Fed's hikes — 525 basis points since   
   early 2022 — won't be felt until the end of this year or early 2024. When   
   that happens, it will provide a fresh impetus for stocks and housing to   
   turn down. It’s premature to say the economy has weathered that storm.   
      
   And the Fed may not even be done hiking yet. In their latest projections,   
   central bankers penciled in one more rate increase.   
      
   A Downturn Is Hiding in Plain Sight in the Forecasts...   
      
      
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