When I set my ‘Hindsight Goggles’ to 100, I too saw that the Fed would keep raising interest after the initial rounds, because unemployment would stay low despite massive layoffs, somehow, and that prices would keep rising. And I am an expert in finance.

I, too, am a genius in hindsight. It's great to be in such rare company.

Surely in retrospect, it must have been obvious you would find such people despite their rarity?

You got me there.

There still a war on, inflation wouldn'tve gone down until that ended. And you have to take the temperature of things in your daily life, its like Keynes said, people are driven by the "animal spirit", the market doesn't always (or ever) make sense, you have to get a feel for it and use specific data to support that feeling, not the other way around. Jesus am I the only one taking out more lines of credit with the expectation of an extended period of inflation? If everyone else is doing that (which they should be), the money supply will continue ballooning, the economy will stay strong and unemployment low.

If people keep borrowing everything will be alright? Society, the economy, doesn’t work that way.

The economic good times are when confidence, trust, risk taking are all high. That music stops when people lose confidence, the Great Financial Crisis, just like all recessions are fundamentally a loss of confidence. This causes people with funds to claw them back, and retreat into their castle, and wait for the bad times to blow over. This is what happens when the economy collapses. When prices and asset liquidity crash. When rates go up. When you can’t borrow anymore and when you have to pay back the money you are borrowing, because it’s in the fine print that they can ask for it back whenever they like. Then inflation goes up. Borrowing rates go up. Asset prices go up, unless no-one has confidence in that particular asset (eg stocks or property where those companies are based).

Consumer leverage is not a bulwark against recession.

Based on what you’re saying here, is it a good time to buy a first home? The interest rate and prices have been scaring me but maybe I’m looking at it wrong.

I thought layoffs were way below trend? What layoffs?