There's no recession, though. There may be one this year, but it didn't exist before all of these layoffs. It may not be a conspiracy, but it seems questionable to believe these companies are not willing a recession into existence through, charitably, pessimism.

I think it is less pessimism and more realism. The fed clearly indicated that it will raise rates until the market cools

As far as the Fed is concerned inflation, unemployment & GDP growth are all definitely higher priorities than the stock market.

I agree. I didn't mean to imply I was taking about stocks.

If the fed is shrinking economic investment until employment and inflation goes down, companies are preparing for slow growth.

The US economy shrank in the first 2 quarters of 2022, and is already forecast to shrink in the first 3 quarters of 2023. Whether it’s in recession or not is a technical issue for economists, but the reality for many companies is that they face a lot of challenges at the moment.

In tech particularly there was a boom as businesses moved online during the pandemic that’s shrivelled away with increasing interest rates and inflation.

There's definitely a recession, however it's hiding behind inflation and rising interest rates. The two trillion in reverse repos are why the recession is having a softer introduction than you may be used to seeing. Companies are both responding too and getting ahead of the equities crunch. The economy crashed and the recession started in full form in March of 2021. But reverse repos have allowed the fed to inject two trillion into equity markets behind the scenes and without the directed action that requires fund managers to rebalance.