Guest Haymaker
Downunder Daily's Gerard Minack on a U.S. Recession
Hello, Subscribers!
When you have a few moments available, listen to just about any political/economic news the Legacy Media is churning out these days. Being perceptive creatures, you’ll notice two things upon review: 1) every ball seems to be up in the air right now, with each one trailed by questions as to where it will land and what impact it will have upon doing so; and 2) every pundit at every level of the game is certain of whatever guaranteed outcome they’re absolutely positive will come to pass because of A-B-C policy change, or X-Y-Z program cut.
Never has such purportedly impeccable foresight been available to us at a time of such unprecedented change. The only problem, of course, is that when the roulette wheel stops spinning and the croupier of the fates determines that most wagers have in fact yielded their wagerers nothing, said wagerers will be quick to memory-hole the predictions they were so gleeful in announcing moments earlier.
“Tariffs will tank the economy!”
“DOGE will cause civic chaos through institutional cuts!”
“Egg prices will never, ever drop!”
“Energy prices are going to skyrocket!”
“The price of digitally typing the word ‘skyrocket’ will itself skyrocket!”
“Doom!”
Oh, yeah, there’s also been talk of recession. We’ve been talking about it, though not strictly through the lens of presidential politics (or any politics) and more from the perspective that a forever-rising market tends to rise forever right up until arithmetical gravity takes hold and leads to pricing correction. That’s true at the level of macroeconomics, it’s true at the level of local housing markets, it’s even true of meme stocks (much to the irritation surprise of so-called “terminally online” market players). It’s true because, despite the anti-physics “rules” of bubblenomics, pricing must occasionally brought into some sort of accordance with tangible value — of course, we’ve probably all been guilty of underestimating Beanie Baby economics; some of those are still selling in five- and six-figure range. If Musk ever gets around to auditing Fort Knox, who among us will be surprised to learn that all the bullion has been replaced by the likes of Punchers the Lobster, Gobbles the Turkey, and (undoubtedly) Princess Diana Bear?
And that, somewhat counterintuitively, brings us to friend of the Haymaker, Gerard Minack, author of the thought-provoking and well-researched Downunder Daily (DUD).
In today’s guest post, Gerard breaks down the American economy into key constituent sections in order to analyze where extant conditions are actually serving as a bulwark against recession, while, in his usual balanced fashion, pointing to those areas of potential vulnerability. As longtime DUD readers, we’re acutely aware of Gerard’s forecasting accuracy on such matters, often better than our own. Even if we disagree on some of the specifics, we always can count on his ability to objectively present the facts. Hmmm… objectivity. Don’t you miss it?!!
The Haymaker Team
“I’m not seeing any signs of a recession in our data. The underlying labor market remains fundamentally healthy. We continue to see moderate growth for small businesses, we see wages continuing to be moderate.” -John Gibson, Paychex CEO (as quoted by CNBC)
Markets are a long way from pricing a US recession
Gerard Minack (Originally published March 24th, 2025)
Investor chatter is focused on the downside risks to US growth – too focussed, in my view. But it is true that markets are a long way from pricing recession. I also address some of the bearish pushback to last week’s note on the US consumer.