AI hype is masking recession signals in the market(axios.com)
axios.com
AI hype is masking recession signals in the market
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/15/ai-stocks-recession
13 comments
True. However, on other side of the coin, some people are interpreting job losses through the AI hype lens rather than the actual cause of a slowing economy.
this. i genuinely don’t know if the market shut me out because ai is now filling the mid tier swe roles or because of a recession. it’s so much easier to blame ai though and assume my time as a swe is over because the career ladder has been pulled up behind me
AI is absolutely NOT filling any kind of SWE roles, especially not mid tier
Recessions are a staple of a market correcting itself. On average, about 1 recession every 6–10 years. Yes, believe it or not, they are common. What you need to worry about is a depression. Those are not healthy.
There are a number of confounding factors currently affecting markets, making it difficult to judge what might constitute a healthy correction or not.
For someone who doesn’t know better: doesn’t stable and predictable economic policy keep us from market fluctuations that create recession?
Fiscal policy is largely driven by political impetus and not data. Monetary policy is data driven, but sometimes the models are flawed, sometimes the response function is two tuned to be backwards looking, etc. In addition to that, monetary policy mainly has blunt tools to work with. Tweaking interest rates can't always head off a recession. I'd even argue that the effects are overstated.
One of the more relevant debates going around now is the "hyper-financialized economy" thesis, which posits that things like market downturns can directly lead to real economic downturns, because the corporate decision to do things like shed expenses and jobs is so closely tied to financial metrics like quarterly profits. In short, the tail wags the dog.
These days it's an especially complex situation though, with tariffs and all, and there are some pretty major decisions coming down the line, like big potential insurance costs spikes, etc, that directly influences the real economy. I would hazard to guess that even with well thought out economic policy, some of the changes that the world is going through is bound to have some unintended effects... and many would argue that we are certainly not seeing "well thought out policy" in the first place.
One of the more relevant debates going around now is the "hyper-financialized economy" thesis, which posits that things like market downturns can directly lead to real economic downturns, because the corporate decision to do things like shed expenses and jobs is so closely tied to financial metrics like quarterly profits. In short, the tail wags the dog.
These days it's an especially complex situation though, with tariffs and all, and there are some pretty major decisions coming down the line, like big potential insurance costs spikes, etc, that directly influences the real economy. I would hazard to guess that even with well thought out economic policy, some of the changes that the world is going through is bound to have some unintended effects... and many would argue that we are certainly not seeing "well thought out policy" in the first place.
Well, sensible economic policy does. The government should vary it's policies to counter external impacts like covid and oil prices doing odd things.
I can't wait for the bubble to burst.
Mostly because I hope it will stop the neverending onslaught of articles and blog posts on HN from folks who giddily insist on telling the world how Claude changed their life and how now they can produce bad code 10x faster than before.
Mostly because I hope it will stop the neverending onslaught of articles and blog posts on HN from folks who giddily insist on telling the world how Claude changed their life and how now they can produce bad code 10x faster than before.
People get excited. People don’t.
The very normal “normal distribution” of people’s reactions to a swell of change, that like the transistor, isn’t going to stop, seems subdued relative to the implications.
Cognitive tech isn’t just going to change some tasks, some jobs, some companies, or some product lines.
We are witnessing a change only matched by a few other profound milestones in the history of life on this planet.
It’s ok if some people’s enthusiasm gets little ahead of the moment. It will catch up with them all too quickly.
The very normal “normal distribution” of people’s reactions to a swell of change, that like the transistor, isn’t going to stop, seems subdued relative to the implications.
Cognitive tech isn’t just going to change some tasks, some jobs, some companies, or some product lines.
We are witnessing a change only matched by a few other profound milestones in the history of life on this planet.
It’s ok if some people’s enthusiasm gets little ahead of the moment. It will catch up with them all too quickly.
I'm so incredibly bored of AI discussions. That said, it seems like this ChatBot paradigm is going to be sticking around for a while... I almost can't wait for something silly like AR or humanoid robots to take hold.
I dread the next iteration of hypewave zero.