Jim O’Donnell’s annual economic forecast wasn’t filled with good tidings of great joy
By DAVE SCHULTZ
Jim O’Donnell, economics professor emeritus at Huntington University, was his genial self as he returned to Bluffton for his annual economic outlook Thursday morning.
His words, however, were sobering.
After beginning his remarks with a rather succinct appraisal of 2022 — “What a dismal year it was” – he painted a less-than-rosy picture of what 2023 could bring.
He mentioned the word “recession” several times, and one of his pages was titled “the likelihood of a recession.”
“I think we are approaching a recession,” he said early in his remarks in the Commerce and Visitors Centre. Later, he noted that in the average recession, the bear market falls 33 percent. “We’ve covered 20 percent so far,” O’Donnell said.
He is no fan of Donald Trump — in terms of personality, that is.
He wouldn’t invite Trump to dinner, he said, “and I wish he’d go away right now, but the people surrounding him helped the economy flourish.”
The Federal Reserve has been combatting inflation by raising interest rates, which could bring a greater problem.
“How far will the Fed go?” O’Donnell asked. “Into recession? I believe so.”
That was obviously a mantra for his outlook on 2023. He never flat-out predicted a recession, just that all signs point to one.
Should a recession happen, he said, and the money supply is tightened, expect something bad.
“Tightening has never occurred without a crisis or something breaking,” he said, recalling the housing crisis during what was termed the “Great Recession” of 2008-09.
He then brought up the name of Sam Bankman-Fried, whose crypto-currency exchange firm FTX lost millions of dollars of its backers’ money when it went belly-up in early November. “So far,” he said, “only FTX and crypto have fallen.”
He concluded, as he has in some years past, with the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.
daves@news-banner.com
