Several theories have emerged about whether a recession will begin soon. One is that rising interest rates will kill mortgage applications and crater the housing market. Another is that rising prices for many household items, especially gasoline and food, will bring consumers to their knees.
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Businesses could face high prices for goods and services but will not be able to pass them on to consumers.
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Presumably, Americans with low incomes will be hurt early. Many minimum wage jobs will not get cost of living increases. To the extent that these people drive to work, they may find themselves unable to pay basic bills.
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Other workers likely to suffer are those in jobs that build more expensive products like cars. It would seem there is pent-up demand for cars, but recessions usually wreck that.
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Construction workers also will find themselves hard-pressed to keep jobs as residential construction falls and commercial construction stays low.
Where Does the Recession Hit First?
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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