Real Clear
Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst addresses relevant political and social issues of our times in a straightforward and honest manner. Taking on anti-logic factions that are growing in society. News and opinions that you can rely on for integrity and depth!
Real Clear
Are We In a Recession? Data and Planning (Free Version)
SUBSCRIBE
CONSULTING SERVICES
Could an inverted yield curve and a volatile market spell a recession? Join us as we unpack these crucial indicators that have been signaling trouble since mid-2022. We’ll guide you through the maze of GDP metrics, exploring why recent figures might not paint the full picture of our economic health. This episode is your look into the factors at play and what they mean for our financial future, especially against the backdrop of rising consumer and investor uncertainty.
As we face potential financial turbulence, how can you protect your family and assets? Practical strategies for maintaining stability, such as diversifying your income and building emergency funds. Thoughts on financial prudence, focusing on essential spending.
And good morning folks. It is Wednesday, september 18th 2024. I'd like to talk about something much more important than politics or social issues, and that is the economy. I'm going to have a prior guest on, a great economist to talk about microeconomics and your household and things like that sometime soon, but I don't want to wait for him entirely. I'd like to talk to you this morning about a few things I have been noticing and been talking with various business owners and colleagues about economic instability. We're all feeling it in our bones at this time. I don't know if you are, but I'd like you to let me know if you are. Comment at realclearpodcastcom on this post if you're a member.
Speaker 1:And something that's scaring people is that they feel like we are in a recession. They see the cost of goods that has doubled, tripled over the last four years. They know that something about the flow of money is strange. At one point it seemed like monopoly money and now it's becoming more scarce. People can't fill up their trucks who are workers and so forth. They reach $100 and it can't even fill up the tank and they can't go anywhere. And no, electric vehicles are not the answer to that. So I wanted to see if we could measure what's happening. It turns out we can.
Speaker 1:The best predictor, the best recession indicator, is called the inverted yield curve. And, surprise, it's been indicating signs of a recession since July 2022. And it's been pretty significantly down. It's been down to, at times, negative 1%. Now what does this mean? A yield curve, an inverted yield curve? It becomes inverted when long-term interest rates drop below short-term rates, and what that means is it signifies that investors are moving their funds away from short-term bonds into long-term, stable investments. What that means is that they're losing confidence in the near-term market. They don't think that this economy now is a place to put your money market. They don't think that this economy now is a place to put your money, and they're putting money in places like blue chips and long-term, super reliable bonds. The long-term or I should say the inverted yield has started to recover recently, in July, just before July 2024. And then we don't have data for after that moment. I'd be very curious about that data, because my own observations have been that people are becoming very economically anxious since July. So I need to evaluate that data. But we've been told that everything's fine over the last two, three years. It hasn't been. In fact, if you look at what happened with the yield curve, it trends upwards and goes up to 1.5 positive, as far as I can tell, between 2020, and then hovers positive around 2022, since it falls just shortly thereafter in the new year of 22. That seems to be a direct consequence of the COVID bubble stimulus funds. Once those have run out and it seems as though they have since again July 2022, we're seeing some signs of some very strange activity.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to some other indexes. There's something else called the volatility index, and this can measure levels of fear, stress and risk in the market, and we're looking for signs of greater than 30 that signal heightened volatility in the market and again, this is due to consumer investor uncertainty, risk and fear. Values that are below 20 indicate periods of less stress. Guess what our average is right now. Over the last, let's see. Let's do last one year. We can do last one year or five years, they're roughly the same. Values is 19.
Speaker 1:But that's not the end of the story. That might lead people to say we're fine. If you look at what happened over the last, let's say, one year, in August of 2024, yep, just recently, the consumer, I should say the volatility index went up to 27. And if you go back five years, in March of 2020, it went up to 65 and then fluctuated and had varying periods of being well above 20 and at times into the 30s throughout that period 32 just back in October 14th, 2022. 25 in 2023. We have 21 in October 2023.
Speaker 1:As I'd mentioned, 23 just last month, then it dipped to 15 in the middle of August and now we're 22, september 6th, and now we're just down to 16, september 13th. The last measurement. Does that sound healthy to you? This looks more like an EKG. This does not look like an economy that has a consistent outlay in terms of where it's headed. So that's a weird index. Next, if we look at GDP contraction Okay, and at this point I've got to ask that you pay for the rest of my work. If you want to hear it, go to realclearpodcastcom. Join the club, thanks.