Economist Warns That Elon Musk Is About to Cause a "Deep, Deep Recession"

great

This is the point. They want to crash the economy.

I mean, he said so himself even before the election. We just have the fucking stupidest, god awful people in this country that apparently wanted it.
- he said so himself
  
  I would love to be able to show some of my MAGA relatives that clip. Do you have a link?
- Hurray for democracy! Everyone gets a vote just for showing up!

Deportations are also lost jobs. Not sure they will be counted though.

Good point.

But hey, look on the bright side: Musk and his rich bros will be able to buy up stuff for dirt cheap!

Oh come now! That's surely just a coincidence.

Crises are a feature of capitalism. Marx talked about this. Things become hell for the working class, and the capitalists reap the rewards.

Yes, and people with power, people with connections, and people who are rich will always benefit from crises. Naomi Kleins The shock doctrine explains this very well in a modern context.
- Adding to my reading list!
That being said there is yet to be a system that does not have crises.
- We haven't tried many
- The difference is nobody wants to fix them right now, instead misdirecting people toward "woke DEI" and "government waste" as if reducing these will magically fix the crisis.

“Jesse Rothstein is an economist, and currently professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, he was chief economist at the US Department of Labor. He is the founding director of the California Policy Lab, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is a member of the editorial boards of Education Finance and Policy, The Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Review, and Industrial Relations.[1][2][3][4]”

For those that don’t know the guy he’s got a solid pedigree

By April, the employment report will probably be either heavily doctored or just downright not published.

Nazis don't care about the truth.

Taking a page from the CCP
- It’s sad that you have downvotes for this. It is a common practice in authoritarian states.

The people burning down the nation release the "report". Dear leader haz bestest economy evar will be the headline. We will never see clean information again, thats the point. Best unemployment numbers, homelessness over, drug war won, best economy ever, amerikkka has no gays, immigration solved, fairest elections ever. Im concerned that people dont see this coming and trust any information released by this new "government".

Demanding that reporters who make criticisms of Trump/Musk be fired and jailed, is going to get the agencies in line with our Fuhrers.
My guess is that the first bad report will be accurate, but once this administration gets caught with their pants down, they'll fire that team and start releasing jobs reports that have been sharpied to death.

Who is there to warn though?

You got your normal Americans who already know this.

And then there's the manipulated ~~Nazis~~ Magas that won't even listen to this warning.

This is some of that bizarre, black-and-white thinking I've come to expect from Lemmy (and, of course, reddit). I can assure you that there are a lot of "normal Americans" who do not "already know this".
- I'm not the OP. But I'm a bit jaded as well. I come from a family of Trump voters. And moved to a very liberal city after leaving home. So most of the people I know fall into the two camps. The people who do not are few. But my sample is biased of course.
- I feel like too many of the people here really do need to touch grass. Idk if it's the high number of people in tech work or something else but I see so many takes of what "normal" people that's so far off the mark it makes me question when was the last time they spoke to an actual person.

Yeah no shit? Like anyone honest with themselves KNEW that would be the result if Trump won the presidency.

They should have been saying this BEFORE the election, instead of gargling the wrinkled, atrophied, and filthy balls of Trump.

Trump is going to cause the recession. Musk is there because of trump.

Musk paid to get Trump into office. Musk is there because of Musk.
- Worst bromance ever.

be richest person

crash the biggest economy in the world

buy the remains for cheap

not exactly a complicated plan.

maga voters want this to happen. they crave being worse off.

The crabs in a bucket mentality.
- Crabs don't actually root for the outcome, they can't see the outcome. They just try to climb and end up pulling down anything above them. These people actively vote against their interest and then cheer the pain & suffering of others. I'd take crabs any day of the week.
This is what happened in 2008. They’re just trying to repeat the process.

Billionaire Disaster Capitalism - billionaires create their own disasters and then profit immensely off of them

exactly this. crashing the economy IS the plan. you just need to be short on the right stocks at the right time.

The incompetent scammer isn't capable of making economic sound decisions? Who could have imagined that?

You think this isn't exactly what he wants?

Hey, don't worry, it's "a good thing" we're about to enter a recession!

That guy is forgetting that the jobs report is produced by a government agency, so what makes him think they're going to report accurate numbers?

Or any numbers if they are all fired too.
- That reminds me of when someone tried to use the FOIA to request firing information for one of the govt. agencies and all of their FOIA staff had been fired so there was nobody to fulfill the request.

Don’t worry. Elon and his friends will simply invest in shares as they bottom out in the crash.

And, look, I'm not a hedge analyst or an economist, but even I can see that the comedown from the tariffs is going to have a huge negative impact on the stock market.

So, genuine question here, if this recession comes along with the stock market dip, will that cause a spiral that leads to another great depression?

Maybe? I do know that Elon is going after the agency that runs the FDIC. The FDIC insures the bank's money. I don't see how they don't see how shitty this is going to be for all of them too. It's insane.
- Oligarchs have their money tied up in property, investments, and hidden from the taxman in foreign banks. Destroying the stock market would hurt them a bit, but destroying banks? The way they see it, only poor people have their money in a savings account.
That depends on a bunch of factors.

Here's my take on what "caused" the Great Depression (over simplification, obviously):

Widespread deflation as countries returned to the gold standard after WW1

Reduced spending due to 1 (holding cash was better than investing)

Tariffs further reduce demand by hiking prices

This time around, spending is pretty healthy, we're not in a deflationary environment (just coming off an inflationary environment), etc. Tariffs will likely cause a demand shock due to higher prices though, so I think recession is likely as spending falls off (assuming the tariffs stick). I doubt we'll see a depression unless Trump increases tariffs again in response like Hoover did.

Everything depends on how the US gov handles the reaction to tariffs and how other countries react as well.
- I doubt we’ll see a depression unless Trump increases tariffs again in response like Hoover did.
  
  Hoover wasn't ripping through the federal government, slashsing employee headcounts, and slashing outgoing funds.
  
  These two alone, are likely enough to seal the "Depression" deal... Like, in 1 month, we have 30,000+ new people seeking unemployment; states, counties, and cities are going to start cutting jobs too, because of the slashed federal funds which fund programs at those levels. I know one non-profit that has basically let all 90 employees go, because lack of federal funds coming in on grants means they can't keep the rent paid.
- Also the wave of unemployment that is about to cone might push us into a recession
- So basically a competent and thoughtful government is sort of required to avoid one?
  
  gulp

What makes you think that there'll be a report in March or April?

I fucking hope so. I cannot wait to watch this burn down around them.

I saw a report that said the likelihood of an asteroid hitting the Earth has gone up and I thought to myself, hmmm, that might be nice.

Haha yeah

Won’t these numbers be manipulated and likely outright lies anyway?

Global reciprocal Tariffs, aren't going to lead to recession, they're going to lead to the worst Global economic depression since the 1930's. With Trump taking over control of the USPS (announced just today), and martial law soon on the horizon (maybe even a Russian invasion of California, you know, for a treat), this next couple months is gonna be one for the record books

Don't forget everyone's shit getting hacked and the possibility of Twitter becoming WeChat
I highly doubt that. I think we're in for a recession, but I doubt it'll be anywhere near as bad as 2008, much less 1930s. We could be in for some stagflation like the 1970s though, which would suck.

About to?!?

Dude, I have bad news for you.

The jobs report doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes to whether we're in a recession. Unemployment and the maker are correlated, but the former doesn't cause the latter, rather the inverse.

While I agree a recession is likely, I think it's because of tariffs and the ensuing response from our trade partners, not cutting federal jobs.

I have some serious concerns about that guys credentials if he thinks unemployment causes recessions...

True, I think (hope) OP meant that a poor jobs report portends a deep recession.

US GDP for all of 2024 is positive, but consumer sentiment isn't getting any better any time soon. Add in talk of a shutdown in March, and the market might take this and the weekly on-again-off-again tariff BS as uncertainty best avoided and get all bearish. Meaning more job losses in the private sector, etc.

I'm personally ready to hunker down for a full on 2008-style recession.
- It sounds like they're saying the jobs report will be bad because of the workforce reduction the government reduction. A monthly jobs report is usually around 100-150k jobs added, so a 200k reduction would put that in the negatives.
  
  The jobs report is only useful as a trend, and even then only in concert with other data. The OP really needs to clarify what they mean, because this sounds completely uninformed as to what the jobs report means and how it's used.