(RoyalPatriot.com )- Back in October, podcaster Steve Bannon warned that Americans will likely face the “bleakest, darkest Christmas in living memory” due to the Biden administration’s “reckless” spending.
Watch HERE.
However, Bannon may have been overstating things.
CBS News reported on Monday that Christmas sales rose this year despite surging prices on everything from food to rent, increasing 7.6 percent, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse.
That was a slower pace than the 8.5 percent increase last year when Americans began spending money they saved during the pandemic lockdowns.
At the same time, it could just be that Bannon was off on the timing.
The latest Bloomberg monthly survey of economists, conducted between December 12-16, found that the probability of a US economic downturn in 2023 increased to 70 percent, up from 65 percent in November’s survey.
According to the survey, the economists predict paltry growth in the new year, with the median estimate for the US GDP at just 0.3 percent, including a 0.7 percent decline in growth during the second quarter and no growth in both the first and third quarters.
Consumer spending, which accounts for around two-thirds of the total GDP, is barely projected to grow in the middle half of the year, according to the survey.
Bloomberg reported over the weekend that the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) is predicting the world will face a recession in 2023 due to higher borrowing costs.
Kay Daniel Neufeld, the director and head of forecasting at CEBR told Bloomberg that a worldwide recession is likely in the coming year “as a result of the rises in interest rates in response to higher inflation.”
According to the CEBR report, central bankers will likely continue increasing interest rates in 2023 to combat inflation, “despite the economic costs.”
Bloomberg reported that the CEBR findings are “more pessimistic” that the October forecast from the International Monetary Fund which warned that over a third of the world’s economy will contract in 2023 and there is a 25 percent chance the global GDP will grow by less than 2 percent, which is the definition of a global recession.
