Recession Watch: My Favorite Recession Indicator, Mid-June Update

By Wolf Richter

It says: “Not yet,” and “Quite a ways to go.” This trend has reversed before, but if it doesn’t and instead picks up momentum… Time to keep an eye on it.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

When does a recession start? In the US, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which calls the official recessions in the US, has always defined recessions as broad economic downturns that include downturns in the labor market, such as declines in employment and significantly rising unemployment, neither of which have happened in this cycle.

My favorite recession indicator is the weekly data on the people who filed for unemployment insurance at least a week earlier and are still claiming unemployment insurance because they still haven’t found a job, what the Labor Department calls “Insured Unemployment.”

The black slanted line is the Recession Marker. The levels that entail a recession have risen over the decades as total employment has risen. This growth of employment over the decades causes the Recession Marker line to be slanted upward.

Alphabet Is the AI King That No One's Betting On

By Sean Michael Cummings

Sergey Brin didn't plan to return to work...

After stepping down from his executive role at Alphabet (GOOGL) in 2019, Brin faded into billionaire obscurity. He busied himself with charity, venture capitalism, and windsurfing...

But in late 2022, everything changed...

That fall, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Overnight, Silicon Valley's favorite search engine looked like a dinosaur. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai even called it a "code red" emergency...

And just like that, Brin came back to head up Alphabet's AI overhaul.

Brin recently reported that he's at the company "pretty much every day now," leading the charge to perfect new AI products.

And for the first time in years, Alphabet is quietly winning the AI arms race. But Wall Street isn't awake to that reality just yet.

Every European Country Reinstituting Drafts, They Want War – Martin Armstrong

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Saturday Night Post)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is back with an update on his big turn toward war in Ukraine with Russia. Two weeks ago on USAW, Armstrong predicted, “After May 15, war is turning up (in Ukraine) and it will be turning up into 2026.” That prediction paid off to the exact day as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine ended on May 15 after just two hours, and neither side agreed to meet again. War is already here, and there is no stopping it with peace talks. Armstrong says, “Putin knows and understands this is not a just a war with Ukraine, this is a war with NATO. If Putin agrees to a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine, what’s that going to do? Absolutely nothing. You have every European country reinstituting drafts. In Germany, even people 60 years old have been told to report. Poland has ordered every able-bodied man to show up for military training. They want war. Their economy is collapsing. You hear about this de-dollarization, and it’s not happening. The capitalization of just the New York Stock Exchange is worth more than all of Europe combined. That’s just the New York Stock Exchange. . . . You’ve got Macron in France, they call him the ‘Petite Napolean.’. . . Without war, Europe is going to collapse. It’s in a sovereign debt crisis . . . They have done everything against the economy.”

Armstong thinks Russia will finish off Ukraine sometime in 2027 and Europe a year or two after that. And, Yes, Armstrong still thinks Ukraine will disappear from the map.