It's not even midyear yet, but the full gamut of scenarios has been juggled in just five months.
World markets have swung from "hard landing" fears of late 2022 to the "soft landing" hopes of the new year and then even unnerving thoughts of "no landing" at all - just before the banking stress hit of March forced them to return to square one.
"The economy is more resilient than the market realizes," BlackRock's Chief Executive Larry Fink said on Wednesday, adding more interest rates rises will be necessary but that he saw no "evidence that we're going to have a hard landing."
A "soft landing" typically relates to the ability of the Federal Reserve and other central banks to get inflation back close to 2% targets without crashing the economy into a deep contraction with surging unemployment via extreme rate rises.
If correct - and not all agree - the prospect of a sustained return to 2% inflation targets would surely turn off the seatbelt sign.
Persons:
Larry Fink, Willem Sels, Simona Mocuta, Mocuta, Mike Dolan, Lisa Shumaker
Organizations:
Federal Reserve, Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics, HSBC Global Private Banking, Nasdaq, Street Global Advisors, Reuters Graphics Reuters, Reuters, Twitter, Thomson
Locations:
U.S, Wall, United States, Europe