A global recession is on the horizon - please read OP for mod warning

It's pretty much a given at this stage that there will be a recession.

Several contributing factors:

1. ECB and the Fed have been printing cash since the 2008 crash to boost economies.

2. During Covid they put the money printing in overdrive to keep economies afloat.

3. All this additional money in markets reduced the value of the currencies, I.e. value was diluted.

4. During Covid most people(who could save) hoarded cash as there wasn't a nowhere to spend it with lockdowns etc. Zmany invested in bitcoin and Gamestop nonsense.

5. After covid this additional unspent money was flooding the markets, pent up home improvements with WFH, ordering new cars etc. This also resulted in the recent parity of the Euro with the Dollar, the Euro being impacted further by the delay in the ECB increasing interest rates.

6. During covid global logistics were hugely impacted, resulting in shortages of chips etc. pushing the price of chips globally through the roof.

7. Global chip shortages caused companies to book more output from chip foundries like TSMC, this is now resulting in an oversupply of chips forcing chip prices down but also companies like Apple Nvidia, Amd to reduce their planned production from TSMC

8. The war in Ukraine is obviously forcing the huge increase in the price of oil, gas, and fertiliser.

9. Preasures in the cost of increased fuel/heating worldwide are forcing families to focus their spending on these increased costs for heating fuel thereby reducing their discretionary spending elsewhere(holidays, hotels, restaurants, hairdo's etc.)

10. The reduced spending in the economy due to people focusing on the bare essentials will cause initially a recession in the services industry and layoffs increasing unemployment.

11. The tech industries already see this, the largest of these Facebook/Meta Apple, Google are already predicting a huge downturn in revenue over the next 3-4 quarters and have stopped/hugely reduced hiring.

12. The normal apparatus for reducing inflation is to increase interest rates which in turn cools economies as borrowing becomes expensive which reduces consumption.

13. However, interest rate increases will reduce spending in the overall economy which would normally reduce the cost of things, reduce investment resulting in reduced hiring for employees.

14. The problem post covid us no longer down to availability of goods driving prices higher but the increased cost of fuel. Cost of fuel increases impacts the delivery of goods to stores, the cost of fertiliser etc. which is driving the cost of everything up, beef, poultry, vegetables and everything else that you buy.

15. Increased costs of everything is forcing employees to request higher wage/salary increases which will result in prices being pushed up further.

16. The war in Ukraine is driving the price of commodities such as flour grain, cooking oil up, increasing the cost of basic items such as pasta etc further.

All of the above forcing the price of basic essentials beyond the means of average people means it is completely unsustainable. As people pull back to focus on just being able to live will drive economies into recession, this will even reduce the price of oil due to worldwide economic contraction of production which will drag the cost of commodities down. The main outlier at the moment is the price of gas which with the war in Ukraine and Russia being the main supplier in Europe is forcing the cost of gas to remain stubbornly high.

So yes to summarise a recession is definitely on the horizon , its actually needed tp bring prices somewhat back to some levels of normality.

The cost of gas is the main worry, it can force higher inflation while economies are contracting, essentially resulting in runaway inflation and people becoming poorer and poorer.