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Danielle DiMartino Booth: “America Is Already In A Recession”

VRIC Media Jul 13, 2026

Summary

The guest argues America is already in recession, with payrolls revised down in 30 of the last 40 months and 2025 showing net job losses.

Labor force participation fell to 61.5 percent, the lowest since 1976 outside COVID, as 720,000 Americans gave up job searches in one month.

Consumer stress builds: household bankruptcies up 12 percent, small-business filings 50 percent, and American car payments sit at record levels.

Booth sees gold's long consolidation flushing out 'tourist' money and creating a definitive floor, an attractive entry point if credit cracks.

AI capex may not last: circular financing, valuation-dependent earnings and cheaper Chinese technology all question the sustainability of the investment boom.

Danielle DiMartino Booth's takeaways

  • Top takeaway The guest argues the U.S. is already in a recession: after revisions, payrolls showed net job losses across the first three quarters of 2025, which she calls the definition of recession, and she questions why officials will not acknowledge it.
  • She sees consumers as out of runway as of mid-2026 — one in five Americans has a car payment above $1,000 a month, the personal saving rate is about 3%, and household bankruptcies were up 12% year over year — so she expects spending to struggle in the second half of the year.
  • She calls gold's long consolidation and sell-off a very interesting entry point, arguing 'tourist' money has been flushed out and a definitive floor is forming, and says cracking credit markets would be good for gold.
  • She doubts the AI capital-spending boom is sustainable, citing circular financing, earnings dependent on private-market valuations of AI holdings, cheaper Chinese AI technology, and an underlying economy ex-AI doing little (Atlanta Fed Q2 2026 GDP tracking at 1.3%).
  • On policy, she finds Kevin Warsh's early Fed leadership encouraging — less FedSpeak and a near-singular focus on price stability — but does not think the economy is strong enough to withstand a rate hike, with hike pricing pushed out to December 2026.

Kevin Warsh's takeaways

  • Top takeaway As the new Fed chair since April 2026, Warsh is cutting back on FedSpeak and letting the data speak, an approach the guest says markets broadly welcome.
  • The guest says he is almost singularly focused on price stability and getting inflation back to the 2% target after a long stretch above it.
  • He has repeatedly mentioned the trimmed-mean inflation gauge, and a Fed task force is weighing alternative data measures, raising the prospect of shifting focus away from core PCE.
  • He argues payrolls are 'only as good as the echo of their third revision,' and the guest says he was right to de-emphasize them since 30 of the last 40 months were revised down.
  • His first congressional testimony, due the week after the interview, was framed by both speakers as the first big test of his approach.

Darrell Thomas's takeaways

  • Top takeaway The host suggests officials' refusal to declare a recession is politically motivated given the upcoming midterms, noting the fallout would land on whoever is in charge when it is acknowledged.
  • Reporting from the Seattle area, he cites falling home prices on his Redfin app and layoffs among big tech employers as on-the-ground signs of weakness.