Elon Musk, the CEO and founder of Tesla, believes that the global economic downturn could last for another 18 months.
The world’s richest man and mercurial electric car boss suggested that the recession would last “till spring of ’24” in a conversation on Twitter early on Friday morning.
The comments were made in response to a tweet from Billy Markus, a co-creator of Dogecoin, known online as Shibetoshi Nakamoto, who highlighted that current coronavirus numbers “are actually pretty low. i [sic] guess all we have to worry about now is the impending global recession and nuclear apocalypse.”
“It sure would be nice to have one year without a horrible global event,” Musk replied.
When asked how long he believed the recession would persist by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, a Twitter account with over 600,000 followers, Musk responded, “Just guessing, but probably untill spring of ’24.”
The International Monetary Fund projects that the global GDP would slow to 3.2% this year and 2.7% in 2023 from its 2021 rate of growth of 6%. With the exception of the temporary decline during the early days of the Covid pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis, that would represent the slowest pace of growth since 2021. The U.S. GDP is expected to rise by just 0.2% this year and 1.2% in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve.
Musk is the newest business mogul to voice concerns about the state of the economy.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, warned in a tweet on Wednesday that it is time to “batten down the hatches” in anticipation of choppy economic conditions. That tweet was sent along with a video of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon saying in an interview with CNBC that he believes there is a “good chance” that the United States will experience a recession.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has also issued warnings about impending economic turmoil.
In addition, Musk’s remark came after Tesla stock had a difficult week as the automaker missed revenue projections and issued a warning about a likely delivery shortage this year.
He was more optimistic about the American economy than the economies of other nations on the analyst call. He did mention how the economy is being impacted by rising interest rates.
“The U.S. actually is in – North America’s in pretty good health,” he said. “A little bit of that is raising interest rates more than they should, but I think they’ll eventually realize that and bring back down, I think.”
However, he said China is in “quite a burst of a recession of sorts” driven by the real estate market, while Europe “has a recession of sorts, driven by energy.”
