I always wonder if the chicken or egg comes first. Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but I didn't see any broad slowdown until companies started laying off, saying there's this broad slowdown that's totally coming soon. Now, with people being laid off and tightening their spending, leading to an actual slowdown, the prophecy is fulfilled!
The last recession had a pretty clear cause you could point your finger at: The collapse of subprime mortgages. This one (presumably we're about to experience one) and the first dot-com crash didn't seem to be caused by anything besides a critical mass of businessmen agreeing "Well look at that, we're headed into an economic slowdown!"
Inflation came first. Then the controls to slow Inflation raise the cost of borrowing money. We're seeing the fallout of that now.
Corp greed came first I think.. inflation due to covid was transitory.
Lol, ok, Bernie.
I'm not sure about 'broader slowdown' but in the industry I'm in we've seen a massive slowdown in signups and expansions in the existing customers. When we speak with our customers, especially banks, they are seeing massive slowdowns on their side.
Someone has bad metrics here, and when most of our customers across a wide range of industries are laying off, then I'd say that's pretty broad.