https://thegreatrecession.info/ An independent record of the downturn that began in 2008 and the years after it. Every forecast here is dated, and checked at the foot of its page. en https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/when-the-bank-says-no-small-firms-credit-downturn/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/when-the-bank-says-no-small-firms-credit-downturn/ 2026-09-24 Banks tighten lending standards for small firms first and loosen them last; the Fed's own survey has shown it in every cycle since 1990. For a sole trader the cost of a downturn is not a higher rate but a longer wait, and the lenders who answer in a day sell time rather than money. Poland's two and a half million one-person firms are the case in point. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/famous-fed-flops-coming-soon/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/famous-fed-flops-coming-soon/ 2023-04-26 In July 2023 the Federal Reserve would launch FedNow, an instant-settlement system that ends the float between a payment and its clearing. After the Silicon Valley Bank rescue the Financial Times argued this was the moment for a central bank digital currency. This page set the Fed's recent record against that proposal. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/mad-men-of-ai-3/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/mad-men-of-ai-3/ 2023-04-22 In March 2023 thousands of researchers and executives signed a letter asking for a pause in AI development on the grounds that nobody, including its builders, understood how the systems worked. Within weeks the loudest signatory was building his own. A record of what the builders said, what the machines said back, and what a market did with both. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/what-a-day-feds-skyrocketing-balance-sheet/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/what-a-day-feds-skyrocketing-balance-sheet/ 2023-03-18 One week after Silicon Valley Bank failed, eleven of the largest American banks deposited 30 billion dollars in First Republic at the Treasury's and the Fed's urging, the Swiss National Bank promised Credit Suisse 50 billion francs, and the Fed's balance sheet rose by about 300 billion dollars in seven days. Every official said the problem was not systemic and the response was not a bailout. The record of the day. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/fed-up-and-under-fed/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/fed-up-and-under-fed/ 2022-12-10 In December 2022 the Fed was raising rates to loosen a labour market that was tight because millions had left it through death, illness and early retirement. The Chicago purchasing managers' index had never been this low without a recession already under way. The argument that the Fed was treating a supply shortage as a demand problem. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/cashless-society-talk-goes-mainstream-in-a-hurry-and-should-be-trusted-like-the-nsa/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/cashless-society-talk-goes-mainstream-in-a-hurry-and-should-be-trusted-like-the-nsa/ 2022-11-22 By late 2022 the people planning central bank digital currencies were saying so on stage. What was said at the World Government Summit, what a 'digital constitution of human rights' would have to guarantee, and why the record of surveillance safeguards since 2001 is the reason to doubt it. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/money-of-the-apocalypse/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/money-of-the-apocalypse/ 2022-11-16 On 15 November 2022 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced a twelve-week proof of concept for digital money on a shared ledger with Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, Wells Fargo and five other institutions. It followed an executive order in March that had told every federal agency to prepare for a possible digital dollar, and it arrived in the week a crypto exchange lost its customers' money. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/recessional-for-the-recession/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/recessional-for-the-recession/ 2022-09-18 By September 2022 the president, the Fed chair, a Nobel laureate and every bank strategist agreed that two falling quarters were not a recession because the labour market was strong. This page argued that the labour market was not strong but broken: unemployment was low because the workers were gone, not because demand was high, and a Fed reading it as strength would tighten into the wrong problem. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/real-gdp-says-get-real/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/real-gdp-says-get-real/ 2022-07-29 Second-quarter 2022 GDP fell at an annualised 0.9 per cent after the first quarter's 1.6, meeting the two-quarter definition of recession that officials then argued did not apply. Why retail sales that 'beat expectations' were a fall in the quantity bought, why real GDP had to show it, and why stocks rose on the news. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/an-apocalypse-upon-us/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/an-apocalypse-upon-us/ 2022-07-23 July 2022: a bear market, a bond rout, a global energy crisis, a collapsing crypto market, a sliding housing market, the highest inflation in forty years, a war, a drought, and a central bank raising rates into all of it. The list as it stood, and the question it raised. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/inflation-its-much-worse-than-we-thought-but-wait-until-this-little-monster-grows-up/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/inflation-its-much-worse-than-we-thought-but-wait-until-this-little-monster-grows-up/ 2022-06-13 The May 2022 consumer-price report, released that week, showed 8.6 per cent. The argument here was that the worst was still to come: years of created money had inflated assets rather than groceries, and if stocks, bonds and property fell together the money would flow into the one market still rising, commodities, and into everything made from them. Two scenarios, and why the one investors hoped for was the worse. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/the-retail-apocalypse-was-bloodier-than-it-looked/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/the-retail-apocalypse-was-bloodier-than-it-looked/ 2022-06-03 In May 2022 the largest American retailers reported higher revenue and their shares had their worst day since 1987. Behind the dollar figures, real income excluding government transfers was flat, the savings rate was at its lowest since the pit of 2008, credit-card debt was growing at a record pace, and inventories had piled up. The consumer was spending on credit to buy less. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/us-economy-crashes-into-recession/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/us-economy-crashes-into-recession/ 2022-04-29 First-quarter 2022 GDP came in at minus 1.4 per cent annualised against an expected plus 1 per cent, 8.3 points below the previous quarter. The record of the call that recession had begun in the winter, why the yield curve could not show it, and what the numbers said afterwards. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/federal-reserve-crashes-plane-in-route-to-soft-landing/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/federal-reserve-crashes-plane-in-route-to-soft-landing/ 2022-04-25 In April 2022 Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Tesla were in or near bear markets, hundreds of smaller stocks were down 70 to 90 per cent, and a St. Louis Fed president said the bond market was 'not a very safe place to be'. The Fed had not yet sold a single bond. What the descent looked like before the manoeuvre even began. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/the-relentless-march-of-inflation-to-the-drumbeats-of-war-is-killing-us-all/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/the-relentless-march-of-inflation-to-the-drumbeats-of-war-is-killing-us-all/ 2022-04-05 Six weeks into the war in Ukraine, sanctions and shortages were pushing prices up on top of an inflation that had been building for a year: Saudi crude at record premiums, Exxon's biggest profit since 2008, wheat and fertiliser cut off from East Africa, rationed sunflower oil in Spain and Greece. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/seeing-it-all-come-together/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/seeing-it-all-come-together/ 2022-03-23 Two weeks after the Federal Reserve's final QE purchase, the ten-year yield had risen from 1.95 to 2.39 per cent, global bonds were in their worst drawdown on record, and the yield curve was flattening toward inversion at a pace nobody had seen. The mechanics, as they were laid out at the time. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/federal-job-fakery-hits-peak-balderdash/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/federal-job-fakery-hits-peak-balderdash/ 2022-02-04 The White House warned that January 2022 payrolls would be weak. The report showed 467,000 jobs added, four times the consensus, while the unadjusted count fell by 2.8 million and year-end revisions lifted the previous five months by more than 800,000. How the number was made, and what it did to bonds and the Fed. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/next-recession-is-here/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/next-recession-is-here/ 2022-02-02 Fourth-quarter 2021 GDP printed 6.9 per cent annualised, the fastest full year since 1984. Almost all of it was businesses stocking up ahead of shortages. Why that number argued for a winter recession rather than against one, and what the Fed was about to do into it. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/biden-vax-plan-may-be-straw-that-breaks-wise-mens-camels-backs/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/biden-vax-plan-may-be-straw-that-breaks-wise-mens-camels-backs/ 2021-09-13 In September 2021 the administration ordered employers of more than a hundred people to require vaccination or weekly testing. Ships waiting off Los Angeles had increased by a third in a month, a hospital had stopped delivering babies for lack of staff, and Bank of America said the first phase of stagflation had arrived. The labour arithmetic, as it was made at the time. https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/coronacrisis-creates-trillion-dollar-dozen/ https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/coronacrisis-creates-trillion-dollar-dozen/ 2020-08-20 By August 2020 the twelve richest Americans were worth more than a trillion dollars between them, a gain of forty per cent since the pandemic began. The mechanism, share buybacks funded by cheap credit and then rescued by the Fed, was the same one that had hollowed out the companies before the crisis.