This really sounds to me like CEO's preemptively torching their companies, thus creating a recession. Good luck getting all those employees familiar with the product and culture back now that they feel betrayed. Get ready to train some new less skilled employees in the future at great cost. Way to destroy shareholder value by reducing profit, lowering product quality, and not being able to ship on time! This is like trying to time investments in the markets. Unless you can manipulate the markets it is impossible to do. Wait until _your_ sector of the market is in trouble and _then_ consider whether cutting jobs makes sense, otherwise you may be shooting yourself in the foot by creating the problems you fear as you follow the herd off the cliff.

Yes they could. The economy is partly psychological. Once the everyday needs are met, spending on the stretch items can be delayed psychologically to reduce GDP.

Isn’t this what raising rates is? It’s likely more psychological than anything.