Plutarch writes in his life of Marcus Antonius that, in the midnight quiet the evening before Octavian’s forces seized the city of Alexandria, music of flutes and the cries of revelers could be heard in the streets below the citadel as if a Bacchic procession was making its way toward the gates beyond which the besieging Roman army lay encamped. The sound of the troupe grew loudest as they approached the gates, then suddenly dashed out. Plutarch suggests that the episode was interpreted as a sign that Antonius’ patron Dionysius, god of dissipation and madness, had abandoned him to his fate.
The IMF released its growth forecasts in which it called for growth in the United States to slow by 1%. That seems optimistic in our view. While the hard data don’t yet reflect outright economic contraction, they do point to marked deceleration. If the US can pull off historically average growth of 1.8% in 2025, then it really is the exceptional nation. It seems more likely that higher capital costs, higher input prices and lower demand will lead companies to undertake layoffs, further subduing consumer sentiment and leading to a self-reinforcing contraction.
Though the numbers haven’t been large enough yet to grab headlines, the downward march of Quits and the upward slog of Layoffs demonstrate that the labor market has momentum toward looseness. Current administration policy is so disruptive as to produce the rapid change in these figures that denote the beginnings of Recession. You’ll know its arrival by the sudden quiet.
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