Business Titans Are Sounding the Alarm Over the U.S. Economy

“Kennedy” panelists Inez Stepman, Jessica Tarlov and Scott Horton discuss a Bloomberg economic model predicting a 100% chance of recession within the next 12 months.

A growing number of influential Wall Street executives and business titans have sounded the alarm over the state of the U.S. economy.

Relentless inflation combined with the most hawkish Federal Reserve in decades have raised the specter of a recession, according to some of the most prominent CEOs in the country.

The U.S. central bank has embarked on one of the fastest monetary tightening paths in decades as it seeks to wrestle consumer prices that are still running near a 40-year high back to 2%.

In a troubling development, however, the Fed’s rate hikes have thus far failed to tame inflation: the government reported last week that the consumer price index soared 8.2% in September from the previous year, faster than expected. Even more concerning, core prices – which exclude more volatile measurements of food and gas – jumped 6.6%, the fastest since 1982.

INFLATION SURGED MORE THAN EXPECTED IN SEPTEMBER AS PRICES REMAIN PAINFULLY HIGH

A shopper looks at organic produce at a supermarket in Montebello, California, on Aug. 23, 2022. (Frederic J. BrownAFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

That indicates the Fed will have to continue charting its aggressive course, raising the odds that it will crush consumer demand and cause unemployment to rise.

Economic growth already contracted in the first two quarters of the year, with gross domestic product – the broadest measure of goods and services produced in a nation – shrinking by 1.6% in the winter and 0.6% in the spring, signaling the start of a technical recession.

The chorus of ominous warnings is likely unwelcome news for President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly maintained that the U.S. will avoid a recession and that any downturn will be “very slight” as he seeks to assuage voter fears about the state of the economy ahead of the pivotal midterm elections.

“I don’t think there will be a recession. If it is, it’ll be a very slight recession,” the president said last week during an interview on CNN. “That is, we’ll move down slightly.”

Here’s a look at which corporate executives see a downturn looming on the horizon.

David Solomon 

David Solomon, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, speaks during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Nov. 17, 2021. (Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon recently warned that there is a “good chance” the U.S. economy tumbles into a recession, warning investors to brace for turbulent waters ahead.

“I think you have to expect that there’s more volatility on the horizon now,” Solomon said during an interview on CNBC. “That doesn’t mean for sure that we have a really difficult economic scenario. But on the distribution of outcomes, there’s a good chance that we have a recession in the United States.”

Given the economic uncertainty as a wave of

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