JP Morgan Asset Management’s chief investment officer Bob Michele warned Thursday that the U.S. is headed for a recession.
Michele started his Wall Street journey in the early 1980s stagflation period, but he said that 2022 is the most challenging year of his career thus far, according to Bloomberg. While Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell continues to try and engineer a “soft-landing” for our current inflation crisis, Michele is less optimistic.
A recession is looking more likely than Powell’s soft landing, Michele told the outlet. “This current period is no doubt the most challenging in my career,” Michele said in the interview. “You are stuck with a lot of liquidity in the system and rates that look ridiculously low relative to the levels of growth and inflation that we are seeing and where employment is.” (RELATED: ‘Global Food Catastrophe’ Coming Soon, Warns Germany, United Nations)
Bloomberg argued that Michele’s pessimism is built from the historical collapse of stocks and bonds around the world, coupled with $8 trillion lost from the S&P 500 alone. “We had gone through recessions, deep and shallow, and we recovered. What we are learning is that high inflation expectations when they are entrenched can become destructive,” Michele continued.
‘Put On Your Seat Belts On’: BlackRock President Warns Of Massive Shortages Due To Inflation https://t.co/ZbFkqFkrHm
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 30, 2022
Michele reinforced his point that “the central banks now have to scramble to try to get that out of system while trying to engineer a soft landing. Stagflation and recession look more likely to us than soft-landing.” The impact of inflation and recession have forced Americans into cutting back on eating out and going to the grocery store as food prices soar.