Market Moves Suggest a Recession Is Unavoidable
Just about everyone I talk to on Wall Street acknowledges that things are slowing down.
The bears are roaming Wall Street.
Photographer: Jean-Francois Monier/AFP
As a longtime market observer, what I find most interesting about the latest correction in equities has the feeling of inevitability that it will turn into something worse. It wasn’t this way in late January, when everyone wanted to buy that dip. It certainly wasn’t this way in 2007, when the magnitude of the recession was grossly underestimated.
Even the Federal Reserve is getting into the pessimism. Chairman Jerome Powell signaled last week that a pause in interest-rate hikes might be forthcoming. What’s interesting about that is Powell surely knew that such a reference might be interpreted as bowing to pressure from President Donald Trump and yet he did it anyway. In essence, he risked the perception of the Fed’s independence probably because he knows the economic data is worsening.