Give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve earned it. You remembered a Chris Mathews quote thereby qualifying you as informed. I’ll study up.

Now back to how the media has caused the stock market to flash crash (in slow mo).

 

Don’t know if we’ll shrink or grow if this continues but budget for guarantee pay in your current seat (and nothing more) and pay off as much debt as possible. Always. In good times and bad......until the day you retire.

That’s prudent. Not ominous.
Hiring should continue to at least cover attrition for a while. Retirements continue to increase until they peak in 2028.

 

So don’t get married or have kids because of the potential for divorce and child support payments? So just stay single and never have any kid(s)? Not sure if one can go through life with that kind of tin foil hat. Reminds me of the guy who asked why are you bothering saving for retirement right now when you don’t even know if you will live to 66? I mean, really?

 

We are definitely overdue for a recession. I believe it will be a lot more mild than the last one, but it is about time.

We had 8 years of prosperity and growth (2010-2017). This is the longest bull market in history. That won’t last forever. Here are some trends that are leading to this recession.

The stock market is down almost 20% in the last 3 months. Consumer spending is the largest driver of US GDP, and stocks popped huge in the last year under expectations that tax reform would cause a surge in consumer spending. That did not happen, so stocks are coming back to earth.

Taxes are actually going up for close to 20% of Americans. I still fly with Captains who don’t realize they won’t be able to write off all of their crazy Texas property taxes thanks to the SALT deduction cap. Or their union expenses. Or their per diem differential. Or some fellow single FO’s (like me) who saw their marginal tax rate increase from 28% to 32%.

Meanwhile, while $1.5 trillion in revenue was cut due to tax reform, the US govt will spend more on discretionary spending than at any time in history, almost 30% more than it was spending from 2013-2016.

The Fed is not stupid. Inflation is coming. Low rates were needed to pull us out of the last recession, but all that free money needs to be reined in eventually. Higher rates means less money flowing through the economy.

Now half a million government employees are going without a paycheck during the government shutdown. The US government is our largest customer, and they’re not purchasing any airline tickets right now.

I could go on and on, but a recession is definitely overdue. Best advice is to live within your means and save to be prepared if the eventual recession has an impact on our industry.

 

Inflation during a recession?

 

My god you folks bicker a lot

 

If you’re fortunate enough to have a steady job with a good income as we have, you will want down markets, even severe down markets, two or three times during your good earning years. The money put in regularly as the market goes down and hits bottom will have the biggest return of all when the market cycles back up. I know this is so obvious as to say DUH, but the emotion of seeing the value of a portfolio go down a lot can sometimes cloud the longer view. The continued buying into the DJIA when it went from 14000 to 7000 last time (or NASDAQ from 5000 to 1100 in 2000) yielded the biggest jump in value when it blew back through 12000 to where it is now. Unless you think this the end of all things and we are entering an apocalyptic era where there is no world order and we'll be bartering with grain and chickens in retirement, then we can take advantage if the market crashes in a big way and we can put all of our 2018 profit sharing check (and maybe 2019 too) into the market when it hits bottom.

At least that’s what i’m trying to convince myself of.

 

Great viewpoint!.......if “the end of all things is approaching “ the only survivors will be coachroaches....and the guppy. 😂

 

Very small single size poll here. My cousin put off refinancing his house and doing a MAJOR remodel because of interest rates. He isn’t the only one. Less money flowing means a pull back in discretionary spending, means a slow down in employment, means a slow down in housing, means a correction/recession.

The good news for you guys. Should the need to shrink the list ever come, United would spend more money furloughing, training, and retraining, rather than just waiting for natural attrition off the top in the form of retirements.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Recession imminent. Hiring will slow next year and the following year may see a halt for a while. Then a slow uptick.