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Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

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201–210 of 281 posts

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major economies are already in deepening recessions. Major producers are starting the year with significant impairment from COVID and supply line pressures. The threat of Russia's aggression affecting other countries remains. Energy prices are still obscene in Europe. I hope things get better, but I think you'd be mad to plan for global growth this year.

> The threat of Russia's aggression affecting other countries remains. Like what countries exactly? They can't even hold the ground they conquered in the previous months in Ukraine. Armenia already asked Russia's help and they refused - it was effectively a fatal blow to CSTO and has far-reaching consequences to the way Russia is perceived among its current and former allies.

There's a big difference between "Russia can conquer this country" and "Russia can make life a living hell for people in this country (the ones it doesn't murder)".

No, Russia can demonstrably not hold much territory in other countries. But Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states would be foolish not to recognize that Putin desperately wants them back under his thumb, and is willing to go to obviously irrational lengths to attempt to fulfill his desires, however unrealistic.

Plus, he still has nukes, at least some of which are almost certainly still functional.

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because unemployment is low that means that the Fed can't drop rates at all or else inflation will come back. And it is likely that if the Fed pauses rate hikes and the economy doesn't fall into recession that there will be another boom and high inflation again, which will kick off more rate hikes. This is the difference between short-term reactions of inflation to rates and long-term reactions. What the Fed needs to…

I'm not a financial person so help me understand. Is it a requirement for the current financial system to maintain an unemployment rate in a certain range (be it 6-8% or something else) in order to keep functioning and not spiral into an inflation death cycle? What happens if we have an unemployment rate close to 0?

The 6-8% isnt necessarily a requirement, but its a tool to reduce the amount of money flowing through the economy. What is a requirement is a boom-bust cycle.

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because unemployment is low that means that the Fed can't drop rates at all or else inflation will come back. And it is likely that if the Fed pauses rate hikes and the economy doesn't fall into recession that there will be another boom and high inflation again, which will kick off more rate hikes. This is the difference between short-term reactions of inflation to rates and long-term reactions. What the Fed needs to…

I'm not a financial person so help me understand. Is it a requirement for the current financial system to maintain an unemployment rate in a certain range (be it 6-8% or something else) in order to keep functioning and not spiral into an inflation death cycle? What happens if we have an unemployment rate close to 0?

We have very clearly just found the lower limit on unemployment which will then produce inflation. We're never going to hit a limit of 0%, there will always be people who are getting fired, and some people who are pretty unemployable. The limit will also change based on conditions and the lower limit from decades ago or decades in the future may be different from today. There's no known good algorithm to tell you what that magic number is.

I'd also argue that "inflation death cycle" packs a lot of negative political assumptions into it. And the "death spiral" economists were typically worried about decades ago was the deflationary death spiral of savings gluts causing deflation causing more savings.

And my assertion is that "the Fed conquering inflation" cannot be read off of the CPI numbers for the past 6 months. We're still at what the Fed would call "full employment" and inflation is lurking and all we've seen is a short term abatement in inflation. If the economy revvs up again, then in the short term the curve will be the same and inflation will reappear.

For the Fed to consider the job done the curve needs to move so that the economy can rev up again without inflation reappearing. That will only happen if there's more slack in unemployment numbers. If we are at 6-8% unemployment then it will take time for the unemployment rate to fall back down to 3.5% and for inflation to reappear. By creating more unemployment you shift the curve so that the economy can run hot for awhile and grow while keeping wage inflation down. So shifting that curve is what the Fed's actual goal is, they're looking beyond what last months inflation numbers were (and they look not only beyond the y-o-y headline inflation numbers but they look beyond the m-o-m inflation numbers). They want to shift the curve, and the way to shift the curve is to have more slack in the jobs markets, which is economist-speak for a higher unemployment rate.

They also will very likely overshoot whatever target they think they have, they don't have a magic wand to control the economy. They mostly just detonate a few bombs in the economy and they don't know how much dry powder is waiting to go off in secondary explosions. Or the way this is usually phrased, "when the tide goes out we find out who was swimming naked".

And there's a tension here in HN between the oft stated belief that a decade of low rates has led to all kinds of malinvestment, and the belief that we're due for a soft-landing kind of recession. One of those I think has to be incorrect. And looking at the vacancy rates in downtown cores, etc I'm pretty sure the soft-landing story is going to be the wrong one. There are a lot of entities surviving on persistently low short rates, and they're going to go under once their loans adjust. The strict capitalists will celebrate this as bad investments going under and getting flushed, but that comes with pain, just like it was painful in 2008.

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because unemployment is low that means that the Fed can't drop rates at all or else inflation will come back. And it is likely that if the Fed pauses rate hikes and the economy doesn't fall into recession that there will be another boom and high inflation again, which will kick off more rate hikes. This is the difference between short-term reactions of inflation to rates and long-term reactions. What the Fed needs to…

I'm not a financial person so help me understand. Is it a requirement for the current financial system to maintain an unemployment rate in a certain range (be it 6-8% or something else) in order to keep functioning and not spiral into an inflation death cycle? What happens if we have an unemployment rate close to 0?

[deleted]

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#205
This thread has been such an interesting read, I know so little about economics that I'm not sure how to parse a lot of the comments.

I don't mean to introduce politics into the discussion more than as a thought experiment: if we had a different president (Trump, for example) would your opinion on whether we are in a recession be different?

It's sort of an interesting method of self reflection.

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major economies are already in deepening recessions. Major producers are starting the year with significant impairment from COVID and supply line pressures. The threat of Russia's aggression affecting other countries remains. Energy prices are still obscene in Europe. I hope things get better, but I think you'd be mad to plan for global growth this year.

> The threat of Russia's aggression affecting other countries remains. Like what countries exactly? They can't even hold the ground they conquered in the previous months in Ukraine. Armenia already asked Russia's help and they refused - it was effectively a fatal blow to CSTO and has far-reaching consequences to the way Russia is perceived among its current and former allies.

Eastern Europe, including all the newest EU members and the EU as a whole. There's a quite some capital flight.

The CSTO is mainly just Russia and they've demonstrated they're incapable of providing military aid to their members. However, Russia getting allied with Iran and China and their puppet North Korea is a problem.

I really wish the US defeats Russia again, like it happened with the USSR, but that's just wishful thinking. We are tired of Germany and France doing business as usual with Russia. Poland basically has zero trust in the EU handling Russia, that's why they arm themselves to the teeth. The others need to look at Poland and get their act together.

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#207

When I see predictions like this I think "awesome, no global recession coming in 2023". I have not done a study on this, but it seems like every prediction I come across is just wrong. Its like when I watch Artosis or Tasteless give a prediction during an SC2 tournament and immediately be wrong. "caster's curse" i think its called.

> When I see predictions like this I think "awesome, no global recession coming in 2023"

From now on, every recession can be blamed on journalists that refused to publish its prediction

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The threat of Russia's aggression affecting other countries remains. Like what countries exactly? They can't even hold the ground they conquered in the previous months in Ukraine. Armenia already asked Russia's help and they refused - it was effectively a fatal blow to CSTO and has far-reaching consequences to the way Russia is perceived among its current and former allies.

Their hissy fits over fuel have driven inflation through the roof in most of Europe. Those same countries are sheltering Ukraine's refugees. More of the same threatens Europe's stability, pushes the EU closer to direct action. And Russia has backed themselves into a corner, diplomatically. Not even the other CIS members have enthusiasm for Putin. So this idiot, who started this desperate for a legacy, only has a pris…

Of course they have the power to affect the whole world in a negative way, but the risk of a second armed invasion when the first one is going very badly is very low. I wouldn't say impossible as history shows there were rulers more stupid than Putin but realistically it wouldn't make much sense.

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The threat of Russia's aggression affecting other countries remains. Like what countries exactly? They can't even hold the ground they conquered in the previous months in Ukraine. Armenia already asked Russia's help and they refused - it was effectively a fatal blow to CSTO and has far-reaching consequences to the way Russia is perceived among its current and former allies.

There's a big difference between "Russia can conquer this country" and "Russia can make life a living hell for people in this country (the ones it doesn't murder)". No, Russia can demonstrably not hold much territory in other countries. But Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states would be foolish not to recognize that Putin desperately wants them back under his thumb, and is willing to go to obviously irrational lengt…

If he was stupid enough to start a second war without winning the first one, I'd say he'd attack one of CSTO members rather than risking a full-scale world war with NATO. (Yes, I know Finland is not in NATO yet, but it's more a question of when, not if).

Re: Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a financial person so help me understand. Is it a requirement for the current financial system to maintain an unemployment rate in a certain range (be it 6-8% or something else) in order to keep functioning and not spiral into an inflation death cycle? What happens if we have an unemployment rate close to 0?

We have very clearly just found the lower limit on unemployment which will then produce inflation. We're never going to hit a limit of 0%, there will always be people who are getting fired, and some people who are pretty unemployable. The limit will also change based on conditions and the lower limit from decades ago or decades in the future may be different from today. There's no known good algorithm to tell you wha…

I'm not going to argue that 3.5 unemployment is compatible with low inflation, but I don't think we've found the limit per se--inflation started rising in 2021 well before unemployment was so low, and there have been huge supply shocks as well.
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