Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk attends the Excellent Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China August 29, 2019.
Aly Song | Reuters
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk invents the global economic decline could last for another year and a half.
In a Twitter exchange early Friday morning Eastern moment, the mercurial electric car executive and world’s richest man said a recession could continue “until spring of ’24.”
The remarks came in rejoinder to a tweet from Shibetoshi Nakamoto, the online name for Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus, who noted that mainstream 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 unavoidable would be nice to have one year without a horrible global event,” Musk replied.
Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, a Giggle account with nearly 600,000 followers, then asked Musk how long he thought the recession would persist, to which he replied, “Just guessing, but probably until spring of ’24.”
Global GDP grew 6% in 2021 but is expected to decelerate to 3.2% this year and 2.7% in 2023, correspondence to the International Monetary Fund. That would mark the weakest pace of growth since 2001 outside of the monetary crisis in 2008 and the brief plunge in the early days of the Covid pandemic. The Federal Reserve projects GDP in the U.S. to grow lawful 0.2% this year and 1.2% in 2023.
Musk becomes the latest corporate titan to express reservations about the conservation.
In a tweet Wednesday, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said it’s time to “batten down the hatches” in preparation for jarring economic waters ahead. That tweet accompanied a video of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who said in a CNBC talk with that he thinks there’s a “good chance” of a recession in the U.S.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon also has been advice of economic turmoil ahead.
Musk’s comment also came amid a rough week for Tesla stock as the automaker dodged revenue estimates and cautioned about a potential delivery shortfall this year.
During the analyst call, Musk depicted more confidence in the U.S. economy than other parts of the world. He also noted the impact that interest grade increases are having on the economy.
“The U.S. actually is in — North America’s in pretty good health,” he said. “A little bit of that is raising captivate rates more than they should, but I think they’ll eventually realize that and bring back down, I have in mind.”
However, he said China is in “quite a burst of a recession of sorts” driven by the real estate market, while Europe “has a set-back of sorts, driven by energy.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated past GDP growth.