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US Economy Grew at 2.6% Annual Rate in Q3, GDP Report Shows

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The U.S. economy grew slowly over the summer, adding to fears of a looming recession — but also keeping alive the hope that one might be avoided.

Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, returned to growth in the third quarter after two consecutive quarterly contractions, according to government data released Thursday. But consumer spending slowed as inflation ate away at households’ buying power, and the sharp rise in interest rates led to the steepest contraction in the housing sector since the first months of the pandemic.

The report underscored the delicate balance facing the Federal Reserve as it tries to rein in the fastest inflation in four decades. Policymakers have aggressively raised interest rates in recent months — and are expected to do so again at their meeting next week — in an effort to cool off red-hot demand, which they believe has contributed to the rapid increase in prices. But they are trying to do so without snuffing out the recovery entirely.

The third-quarter data — G.D.P. rose 0.6 percent, the Commerce Department said, a 2.6 percent annual rate of growth — suggested that the path to such a “soft landing” remained open, but narrow.

loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys.

President Biden cheered the report in a statement Thursday morning. “For months, doomsayers have been arguing that the U.S. economy is in a recession, and congressional Republicans have been rooting for a downturn,” he said. “But today we got further evidence that our economic recovery is continuing to power forward.”

By one common definition, the U.S. economy entered a recession when it experienced two straight quarters of shrinking G.D.P. at the start of the year. Officially, however, recessions are determined by a group of researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research, who look at a broader array of indicators, including employment, income and spending.

Most analysts don’t believe the economy meets that more formal definition, and the third-quarter numbers — which slightly exceeded forecasters’ expectations — provided further evidence that a recession had not yet begun.

But the overall G.D.P. figures were skewed by the international trade component, which often exhibits big swings from one period to the next. Economists tend to focus on less volatile components, which have showed the recovery steadily losing momentum as the year has progressed. One closely watched measure suggested that private-sector demand stalled out almost completely in the third quarter.

Mortgage rates passed 7 percent on Thursday, their highest level since 2002.

“Housing is just the single largest trigger to additional spending, and it’s not there anymore; it’s going in reverse,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG. “This has been a stunning turnaround in housing, and when things start to go really quickly, you start to wonder, what are the knock-on effects, what are the spillover effects?”

The third quarter was in some sense a mirror image of the first quarter, when G.D.P. shrank but consumer spending was strong. In both cases, the swings were driven by international trade. Imports, which don’t count toward domestic production figures, soared early this year as the strong economic recovery led Americans to buy more goods from overseas. Exports slumped as the rest of the world recovered more slowly from the pandemic.

Both trends have begun to reverse as American consumers have shifted more of their spending toward services and away from imported goods, and as foreign demand for American-made goods has recovered. Supply-chain disruptions have added to the volatility, leading to big swings in the data from quarter to quarter.

Few economists expect the strong trade figures from the third quarter to continue, especially because the strong dollar will make American goods less attractive overseas.

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.

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Who Gets the Last Word on Steve Jobs? He Might.

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Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis meticulously curated the memory of her husband after he was assassinated, reimagining President John F. Kennedy as a fallen King Arthur in a modern-day Camelot.

Now some historians wonder if Laurene Powell Jobs is also trying to frame the legacy of her late husband, Steve Jobs, a complicated and transformational figure who was shadowed by his flaws as a father and belligerence as a boss.

Last month, Ms. Powell Jobs introduced the Steve Jobs Archive. It aspires to reinvent the personal archive much as Mr. Jobs, in his years running Apple, remade music with the iPod and communication with the iPhone.

Rather than offering up a repository of personal correspondence, notes and items for public research and inquiry, as other influential figures have done, Ms. Powell Jobs, who did not respond to requests for comments, said at a conference last month that the Steve Jobs Archive would be devoted to “ideas.” Those ideas are primarily Mr. Jobs’s philosophies about life and work.

Harvard Business School’s 25 greatest business leaders of the 20th century left behind personal archives that are open to the public in libraries or museums, including Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Asa Candler, who built Coca-Cola.

Other iconic business founders such as Walt Disney, Sam Walton and Ray Kroc entrusted their papers to the companies they built, allowing those collections to become the cornerstone of corporate archives.

Walt Disney Company, make personal correspondence, notes, speeches and other items available to authors for research.

“We don’t censor,” said Becky Cline, director of the Walt Disney archives. “We just vet.”

The new Jobs archive debuted with a minimalist website containing eight pieces of video, audio and writing that express what the archive calls Mr. Jobs’s “driving motivations in his own words.” The items, three-quarters of which were already public, can be accessed by clicking through maxims made famous by Mr. Jobs, including “make something wonderful and put it out there” and “pursue different paths.”

The next steps for the archive are shrouded in the kind of mystery associated with the way Mr. Jobs ran Apple. About all that’s been publicly disclosed is that Ms. Powell Jobs hired a documentary filmmaker to gather hundreds of oral histories about Mr. Jobs from former colleagues. Where that material will be stored and who will have access to it has not been revealed.

She married Mr. Jobs in 1991, two years after meeting him as a graduate student at Stanford. Since his death, she has used her estimated $16 billion fortune to fund the Emerson Collective, a philanthropic and commercial operation that owns The Atlantic magazine and funds an organization trying to reduce gun violence in Chicago.

During his life, Mr. Jobs admired and encouraged historians to preserve the history of his Silicon Valley predecessors such as Robert Noyce, who co-founded the chip maker Intel. But he put little value on his own history, and Apple has seldom commemorated product anniversaries, saying it focuses on the future, not the past.

Stanford spent years cataloging items such as photos of a barefoot Mr. Jobs at work, advertising campaigns and an Apple II computer. That material can be reviewed by students and researchers interested in learning more about the company.

Silicon Valley leaders have a tradition of leaving their material with Stanford, which has collections of letters, slides and notes from William Hewlett, who founded Hewlett-Packard, and Andy Grove, the former chief executive of Intel.

Mr. Lowood said that he uses the Silicon Valley archives to teach students about the value of discovery. “Unlike a book, which is the gospel and all true, a mix of materials in a box introduces uncertainty,” he said.

After Mr. Jobs’ death in 2011, Mr. Isaacson, the author, published a biography of Mr. Jobs. Some at Apple complained that the book, a best seller, misrepresented Mr. Jobs and commercialized his death.

Mr. Isaacson declined to comment about those complaints.

Four years later, the book became the basis for a film. The 2015 movie, written by Aaron Sorkin and starring Michael Fassbender, focused on Mr. Jobs being ousted from Apple and denying paternity of his eldest daughter.

according to emails made public after a hack of Sony Pictures, which held rights to the film. She and others who were close to Mr. Jobs thought any movie based on the book would be inaccurate.

“I was outraged, and he was my friend,” said Mike Slade, a marketing executive who worked as an adviser to Mr. Jobs from 1998 to 2004. “I can’t imagine how outraged Laurene was.”

In November 2015, a month after the movie’s release, Ms. Powell Jobs had representatives register the Steve Jobs Archive as a limited liability company in Delaware and California. She later hired the documentary filmmaker, Davis Guggenheim, to gather oral histories about Mr. Jobs from former colleagues and friends. She also hired Ms. Berlin, who was Stanford’s project historian for its Apple archives, to be the Jobs Archive’s executive director.

Mr. Guggenheim gathered material about Mr. Jobs while also working on a Netflix documentary about Bill Gates, “Inside Bill’s Brain.” Mr. Slade, who worked for both Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates, said he sat for an interview about one executive, stopped to change shirts and returned to discuss the other one.

Ms. Berlin assisted Ms. Powell Jobs in gathering material. They collected items such as audio of interviews done by reporters and early company records, including a 1976 document that Mr. Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, called their declaration of independence. It outlined what the company would stand for, said Regis McKenna, who unearthed the document in his personal collection gathered during his decades as a pioneer of Silicon Valley marketing and adviser to Mr. Jobs.

Ms. Powell Jobs also assembled a group of advisers to inform what the archive would be, including Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive; Jony Ive, Apple’s former chief design officer; and Bob Iger, the former chief executive of Walt Disney and a former Apple board member.

Mr. Cook, Mr. Ive and Mr. Iger declined to comment.

Apple, which has its own corporate archive and archivist, is a contributor to the Jobs effort, said Ms. Berlin, who declined to say how she works with the company to gain access to material left by Mr. Jobs.

The archive’s resulting website opens with an email that Mr. Jobs sent himself at Apple. It reads like a journal entry, outlining all the things that he depends on others to provide, from the food he eats to the music he enjoys.

“I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being,” he wrote.

The email is followed by a previously undisclosed audio clip from a 1984 interview that Mr. Jobs did with Michael Moritz, the journalist turned venture capitalist at Sequoia. During it, Mr. Jobs says that refinement comes from mistakes, a platitude that captures how Apple used trial and error to develop devices.

“It was just lying in the drawer gathering dust,” Mr. Moritz said of the recording.

It’s clear to those who have contributed material that the archive is about safeguarding Mr. Jobs’s legacy. It’s a goal that many of them support.

“There’s so much distortion about who Steve was,” Mr. McKenna said. “There needed to be something more factual.”

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Liz Truss’s Departure Creates Economic Uncertainty As Inflation Rises

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The fall of Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister for just six tumultuous weeks, has plunged the nation into another phase of economic uncertainty.

When Ms. Truss announced her resignation on Thursday as Conservative Party leader, saying she would stand down as prime minister, the markets that had rebelled against her fiscal policies engaged in a weak and short-lived rally. Investors were left wondering who would be the new leader and what lay ahead for Britain’s economic policy. On Friday morning, government bonds were falling, pushing yields higher, and the pound was dropping.

“It’s a leap into the unknown,” said Antoine Bouvet, an interest rates strategist at ING.

Overall the initial reaction, Mr. Bouvet added, suggested that investors expect that a new prime minister will go ahead with fiscal plans generally supported by the market. But he said it was too early to be sure.

“Let’s see who gets elected leader and what they say on fiscal policy,” he said.

The next prime minister, the third this year, will face a long list of economic challenges. Annual inflation topped 10 percent last month as food prices rose at their fastest pace in more than 40 years. Wages haven’t kept up with rising prices, bringing about a cost-of-living crisis and labor unrest. There is a deepening slump in consumer spending with data on Friday showing people were buying less than before the pandemic. Interest rates are set to rise even as the economy stagnates. And Russia’s war in Ukraine is still rippling through the global economy, especially the energy market.

provoked extraordinary volatility in markets at the end of September when her first chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced a plan for widespread tax cuts and huge spending, to be financed by borrowing. Amid the highest inflation in four decades and rising interest rates, markets deemed the plan, delivered without any independent assessment, a rupture in Britain’s reputation for fiscal credibility. The pound dropped to a record low, and government bond yields shot up so violently the central bank was forced to intervene to stop a crisis in the pension funds industry.

began to settle markets. However, bond yields remain noticeably higher than they were before the September tax plan was announced, as investors still demand a higher premium to lend to Britain. On Thursday, 10-year government bond yields closed at 3.91 percent, up from 3.50 percent on Sept. 22, the day before Mr. Kwarteng’s policy announcement.

Ms. Truss’s tenure as prime minister, the shortest in British history, was undone by economic policies that harked back to the trickle-down economics of the 1980s, built on the belief that tax cuts for the wealthy were fair and would lead to investment and economic growth that would benefit everyone.

fixed rates have settled higher.

Meanwhile, the new government is likely to be focused on restoring the government’s fiscal credibility. Mr. Hunt is set to deliver a “medium-term fiscal plan,” with spending and tax measures, on Oct. 31. He said he expected to make “difficult” spending cuts as he planned to show that debt levels were falling in the medium term.

It will be accompanied by an independent assessment of the fiscal and economic impact of the policies by the Office for Budget Responsibility, a government watchdog.

While markets have cheered the government’s promise to have its policies independently reviewed, questions remain about how the gap in the public finances can be closed. Economists say there is very little room in stretched department budgets to make cuts. That has led to concerns of a return to austerity measures, reminiscent of the spending cuts after the 2008 financial crisis.

“There is a danger,” Mr. Chadha said, “that we end up with tighter fiscal policy than actually is appropriate given the shock that many households are suffering.” This could make it harder to support people suffering amid rising food and energy prices. But Mr. Chadha argues that it’s clear what needs to happen next: a complete elimination of unfunded tax cuts and careful planning on how to support vulnerable households.

The chancellor could also end up having a lot more autonomy over fiscal policy than the prime minister, he added.

“The best outcome for markets would be a rapid rallying of the parliamentary Conservative Party around a single candidate” who would validate Mr. Hunt’s approach and the timing of the Oct. 31 report, Trevor Greetham, a portfolio manager at Royal London Asset Management, said in a written comment.

Three days after the fiscal statement, on Nov. 3, Bank of England policymakers will announce their next interest rate decisions.

Bond investors are trying to parse how the central bank will react to the rapidly changing fiscal news. On Thursday, before Ms. Truss’s resignation, Ben Broadbent, a member of the central bank’s rate-setting committee, indicated that policymakers might not need to raise interest rates as much as markets currently expect. Traders are betting that the bank will raise rates above 5 percent next year, from 2.25 percent.

The bank could raise rates less than expected next year partly because the economy is forecast to shrink over the year. The International Monetary Fund predicted that the British economy would go from 3.6 percent growth this year to a 0.3 percent contraction next year.

That’s a mild recession compared with some other forecasts, but it would only compound the longstanding economic problems that Britain faced, including weak investment, low productivity growth and businesses’ inability to find employees with the right skills. These were among the challenges that Ms. Truss said she would resolve by shaking up the status quo and targeting economic growth of 2.5 percent a year.

Most economists didn’t believe that “Trussonomics,” as her policies were called, would deliver this economic growth. Instead, they predicted the policies would prolong the country’s inflation problem.

Despite the change in leadership, analysts don’t expect a big rally in Britain’s financial markets. The nation’s international standing could take a long time to recover.

“It takes years to build a reputation and one day to undo it,” Mr. Bouvet said, adding, “Investors will come progressively back to the U.K.,” but it won’t be quickly.

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How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable

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On the morning of July 8, former President Donald J. Trump took to Truth Social, a social media platform he founded with people close to him, to claim that he had in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Barely 8,000 people shared that missive on Truth Social, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of responses his posts on Facebook and Twitter had regularly generated before those services suspended his megaphones after the deadly riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.

And yet Mr. Trump’s baseless claim pulsed through the public consciousness anyway. It jumped from his app to other social media platforms — not to mention podcasts, talk radio or television.

Within 48 hours of Mr. Trump’s post, more than one million people saw his claim on at least dozen other media. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter, from which he has been banished, but also YouTube, Gab, Parler and Telegram, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

gone mainstream among Republican Party members, driving state and county officials to impose new restrictions on casting ballots, often based on mere conspiracy theories percolating in right-wing media.

Voters must now sift through not only an ever-growing torrent of lies and falsehoods about candidates and their policies, but also information on when and where to vote. Officials appointed or elected in the name of fighting voter fraud have put themselves in the position to refuse to certify outcomes that are not to their liking.

a primary battleground in today’s fight against disinformation. A report last month by NewsGuard, an organization that tracks the problem online, showed that nearly 20 percent of videos presented as search results on TikTok contained false or misleading information on topics such as school shootings and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

continued to amplify “election denialism” in ways that undermined trust in the democratic system.

Another challenge is the proliferation of alternative platforms for those falsehoods and even more extreme views.

new survey by the Pew Research Center found that 15 percent of prominent accounts on those seven platforms had previously been banished from others like Twitter and Facebook.

F.B.I. raid on Mar-a-Lago thrust his latest pronouncements into the eye of the political storm once again.

study of Truth Social by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, examined how the platform had become a home for some of the most fringe conspiracy theories. Mr. Trump, who began posting on the platform in April, has increasingly amplified content from QAnon, the online conspiracy theory.

He has shared posts from QAnon accounts more than 130 times. QAnon believers promote a vast and complex conspiracy that centers on Mr. Trump as a leader battling a cabal of Democratic Party pedophiles. Echoes of such views reverberated through Republican election campaigns across the country during this year’s primaries.

Ms. Jankowicz, the disinformation expert, said the nation’s social and political divisions had churned the waves of disinformation.

The controversies over how best to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic deepened distrust of government and medical experts, especially among conservatives. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election led to, but did not end with, the Capitol Hill violence.

“They should have brought us together,” Ms. Jankowicz said, referring to the pandemic and the riots. “I thought perhaps they could be kind of this convening power, but they were not.”

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Suzanne Scott’s Vision for Fox News Gets Tested in Court

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The Murdochs, however, have been forced to make hard choices about even their most favored chief executives when scandal overwhelms. In 2010, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, reluctantly pushed out Rebekah Brooks, who ran his British newspapers and was a close protégé, amid a police investigation into phone hacking by journalists who worked for her.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

Ms. Scott maintains a much more discreet profile than her predecessor, Roger Ailes, a whisperer to Republican presidents who cultivated a Svengali-like image in the media before numerous accusations of sexual harassment led to his downfall.

She grew up in Northern New Jersey, where she lives today with her husband and teenage daughter. Her first job for Fox was as an assistant to one of Mr. Ailes’s top deputies. Her first big promotion was to a senior producer position on Greta Van Susteren’s show. She would go on to oversee network talent, and then programming.

Colleagues say she pays careful attention to what’s on Fox, often watching from her office with the sound off and occasionally offering advice to producers and hosts on how sets could look better, outfits sharper and guests could be more compelling.

Under her direction, Fox News has maintained not only one of the biggest audiences in cable but in all of television, occasionally drawing more viewers than traditional broadcast networks like ABC. And Fox News collects far higher ad rates than its competitors — an average of almost $9,000 for a 30-second commercial in prime time, compared with about $6,200 for CNN and $5,300 for MSNBC, according to the Standard Media Index, an independent research firm. (The writer of this article is an MSNBC contributor.)

As chief executive, Ms. Scott has adopted a mostly deferential view of dealing with talent, current and former hosts said.

Mr. Ailes believed that no host should ever assume they were bigger than the network — or him. In 2010, for instance, after Mr. Hannity made plans to broadcast his show from a Tea Party rally in Cincinnati where organizers had billed him as the star attraction, Mr. Ailes ordered the host to scrap his plans and return to New York, threatening to “put a chimpanzee on the air” if he didn’t make it back in time, recalled one former Fox employee.

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How Credit Suisse Became a Meme Stock

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“Credit Suisse is probably going bankrupt.”

It was Saturday, Oct. 1, and Jim Lewis, who frequently posts on Twitter under the moniker Wall Street Silver, made that assertion to his more than 300,000 followers. “Markets are saying it’s insolvent and probably bust. 2008 moment soon?”

Mr. Lewis was among hundreds of people — many of them amateur investors — who had been speculating about the fate of Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank. It was in the middle of a restructuring and had become an easy target after decades of scandals, failed attempts at reform and management upheavals.

There seemed to be no immediate provocation for Mr. Lewis’s weekend tweet other than a memo that Ulrich Körner, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, had sent employees the day before, reassuring them that the bank was in good financial health.

But the tweet, which has been liked more than 11,000 times and retweeted more than 3,000 times, was one of many that helped ignite a firestorm on social media forums like Twitter and Reddit. The rumor that Credit Suisse was in trouble ricocheted around the world, stumping bank executives and forcing them to call shareholders, trading partners and analysts to reassure them that everything was fine before markets reopened on Monday.

prop up the shares of GameStop, the video game retailer, determined to outsmart hedge funds that had bet the company’s shares would fall.

But what started as a spontaneous effort to take down Wall Street has since become an established presence in the market. Millions of amateur investors have embraced trading, including more sophisticated strategies such as shorting. As the Credit Suisse incident shows, their actions highlight a new source of peril for troubled companies.

Founded in Switzerland in 1856 to help finance the expansion of railroads in the tiny European nation, Credit Suisse has two main units — a private wealth management business and an investment bank. However, the bank has often struggled to maintain a pristine reputation.

It has been the repository of funds from businesspeople who are under sanctions, human rights abusers and intelligence officials. The U.S. government has fined it billions of dollars for its role in helping Americans file false tax returns, marketing mortgage-backed securities tied to the 2008 financial crisis and helping customers in Iran, Sudan and elsewhere breach U.S. sanctions.

In the United States, Credit Suisse built its investment banking business through acquisitions, starting with the 1990 purchase of First Boston. But without a core focus, the bank — whose top bosses sit in Switzerland — has often allowed mavericks to pursue new revenue streams and take outsize risks without adequate supervision.

collapsed. Credit Suisse was one of many Wall Street banks that traded with Archegos, the private investment firm of Bill Hwang, a former star money manager. Yet it lost $5.5 billion, far more than its rivals. The bank later admitted that a “fundamental failure of management and controls” had led to the debacle.

surveillance of Credit Suisse executives under his watch. He left the bank in a stable and profitable condition and invested appropriately across its various divisions, his spokesman, Andy Smith, said.

Credit Suisse replaced Mr. Thiam with Thomas Gottstein, a longtime bank executive. When Archegos collapsed, the bank kept Mr. Gottstein on the job, but he started working with a new chairman, António Horta-Osório, who had been appointed a few months earlier to restructure the bank.

resigned after an inquiry into whether he had broken quarantine rules during the pandemic. But he made swift changes in his short tenure. To reduce risk taking, Mr. Horta-Osório said, the bank would close most of its prime brokerage businesses, which involve lending to big trading firms like Archegos. Credit Suisse also lost a big source of revenue as the market for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, cooled.

By July, Credit Suisse had announced its third consecutive quarterly loss. Mr. Gottstein was replaced by Mr. Körner, a veteran of the rival Swiss bank UBS.

Mr. Körner and the chairman, Axel Lehmann, who replaced Mr. Horta-Osório, are expected to unveil a new restructuring plan on Oct. 27 in an effort to convince investors of the bank’s long-term viability and profitability. The stock of Credit Suisse has dipped so much in the past year that its market value — which stood around $12 billion — is comparable to that of a regional U.S. bank, smaller than Fifth Third or Citizens Financial Group.

appeared on Reddit.

Mr. Macleod said he had decided that Credit Suisse was in bad shape after looking at what he deemed the best measure of a bank’s value — the price of its stock relative to its “book value,” or assets minus liabilities. Most Wall Street analysts factor in a broader set of measures.

But “bearing in mind that most followers on Twitter and Reddit are not financial professionals,” he said, “it would have been a wake-up call for them.”

The timing puzzled the bank’s analysts, major investors and risk managers. Credit Suisse had longstanding problems, but no sudden crisis or looming bankruptcy.

Some investors said the Sept. 30 memo sent by Mr. Körner, the bank’s chief executive, reassuring staff that Credit Suisse stood on a “strong capital base and liquidity position” despite recent market gyrations had the opposite effect on stock watchers.

Credit Suisse took the matter seriously. Over the weekend of Oct. 1, bank executives called clients to reassure them that the bank had more than the amount of capital required by regulators. The bigger worry was that talk of a liquidity crisis would become a self-fulfilling prophecy, prompting lenders to pull credit lines and depositors to pull cash, which could drain money from the bank quickly — an extreme and even unlikely scenario given the bank’s strong financial position.

“Banks rely on sentiment,” Mr. Scholtz, the Morningstar analyst, said. “If all depositors want their money back tomorrow, the money isn’t there. It’s the reality of banking. These things can snowball.”

What had snowballed was the volume of trading in Credit Suisse’s stock by small investors, which had roughly doubled from Friday to Monday, according to a gauge of retail activity from Nasdaq Data Link.

Amateur traders who gather on social media can’t trade sophisticated products like credit-default swaps — products that protect against companies’ reneging on their debts. But their speculation drove the price of these swaps past levels reached during the 2008 financial crisis.

Some asset managers said they had discussed the fate of the bank at internal meetings after the meme stock mania that was unleashed in early October. While they saw no immediate risk to Credit Suisse’s solvency, some decided to cut trading with the bank anyway until risks subsided.

In another private message on Twitter, Mr. Lewis declined to speak further about why he had predicted that Credit Suisse would collapse.

“The math and evidence is fairly obvious at this point,” he wrote. “If you disagree, the burden is really on you to support that position.”

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Battle Over Wage Rules for Tipped Workers Is Heating Up

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Sylvia Gaston, a waitress at a restaurant in Astoria, Queens, said her base wage is $7.50 an hour — even though New York City’s legal subminimum is $10, which must come to at least $15 after tips. Ms. Gaston, 40, who is from Mexico, feels that undocumented workers like her have a harder time fighting back when they are shortchanged.

“It doesn’t really matter if you have documents or not — I think folks are still getting underpaid in general,” she said. “However, when it comes to uplifting your voices and speaking about it, the folks who can get a little bit more harsh repercussions are people who are undocumented.”

Subminimum base pay for some tipped workers in the state, such as car washers, hairdressers and nail salon employees, was abolished in 2019 under an executive order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, but workers in the food and drinks industry were left out.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mr. Cuomo’s successor, said while lieutenant governor in 2020 that she supported “a solid, full wage for restaurant workers.” And progressive legislators plan a bill in January that would eliminate the two-tier wage system by the end of 2025.

When The New York Times asked if she would support such changes, Ms. Hochul’s office did not answer directly. “We are always exploring the best ways to provide support” to service workers, it said.

Proponents of abandoning subminimum wages say there could be advantages for employers, including less turnover, better service and higher morale.

David Cooper, the director of the economic analysis and research network at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, contends that when wage laws are changed to a single-tier system, business owners can have the assurance that “every single person they compete with is making the same exact adjustment,” reducing the specter of a competitive disadvantage.

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Aimco Files Definitive Proxy Materials and Mails Letter to Stockholders

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DENVER–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apartment Investment and Management Company (NYSE: AIV) (“Aimco” or the “Company”), today announced that it has filed its definitive proxy materials with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in connection with its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders scheduled to be held on December 16, 2022. Stockholders of record as of October 26, 2022, will be entitled to vote at the meeting. Aimco’s Board of Directors (the “Board”) strongly recommends that stockholders vote on the WHITE proxy card “FOR ALL” three of Aimco’s qualified and experienced director nominees, Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone.

In conjunction with the definitive proxy filing, Aimco has also mailed a letter to the Company’s stockholders. Highlights from the letter include:

Aimco’s definitive proxy materials and other materials regarding the Board’s recommendation for the 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders can be found at https://investors.aimco.com.

1 TSR calculation as of September 30, 2022

2 Includes AHH, CLPR, CSR, FOR, FPH, HHC, IRT, JBGS, JOE, STRS, TRC, VRE, and WRE (per AIV 2021 10-K) represents simple average

The full text of the letter being mailed to stockholders follows:

October 12, 2022

Dear Fellow Stockholders:

Your Board of Directors and management team are committed to enhancing the value of your investment in Aimco and have been unwavering in our commitment to acting in the best interests of our stockholders. We have implemented a clearly defined value creation strategy and a comprehensive transformation of Aimco’s legacy business under a recently reconstituted, majority-independent Board (the “New Aimco Board” or the “Board”) and all-new executive management team.

Since the New Aimco Board and management team assumed their current roles following the Apartment Income REIT Corp. (“AIR”) spin-off in December 2020, Aimco has delivered total stockholder returns of 45%3, significantly outperforming its identified developer peer group4, the FTSE NAREIT Equity Apartments Index, the MSCI US REIT Index, the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000.

Aimco expects to continue to drive growth and outsized returns by:

The New Aimco Board and new management team executing this plan were put in place in connection with the 2020 spin-off of AIR, with the Company:

Despite Aimco’s clear momentum and the recent reconstitution of the Aimco Board, Land & Buildings Investment Management LLC (“Land & Buildings”) has initiated a proxy contest and is seeking to remove and replace two of your highly qualified directors. We have engaged with Land & Buildings to better understand its perspectives and have reviewed the qualifications of the candidates it has put forth. It is clear from our interactions to date, however, that Land & Buildings is primarily focused on historical issues and decisions made prior to the reconstitution of the Aimco Board and the replacement of the Aimco management team. While the New Aimco Board and management are open to continued dialogue with Land & Buildings, we believe that additional director turnover at this time is unwarranted. We also believe that the candidates proposed by Land & Buildings would not bring any relevant expertise that is not already well represented on the Aimco Board, and that election of Land & Buildings’ candidates would remove expertise from the New Aimco Board that is critical to our success.

Against this backdrop, you now face an important decision regarding the future of your investment and go-forward Board of Directors. Your Board has three directors up for re-election who have highly relevant skills and expertise and are important contributors to Aimco’s ongoing success. To protect your investment, we strongly recommend that you vote the enclosed universal WHITE proxy card today “FOR” all three of Aimco’s qualified and experienced director nominees: Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone. Please vote today to ensure your voice is heard at the Company’s Annual Meeting of Stockholders (“Annual Meeting”) on December 16, 2022.

PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT.

USE THE UNIVERSAL WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY TO VOTE FOR ALL THREE

OF AIMCO’S QUALIFIED AND EXPERIENCED DIRECTORS

AIMCO IS SUCCESSFULLY EXECUTING ITS VALUE ADD STRATEGY

For the past 21 months, Aimco has been successfully executing a growth strategy focused on value add, opportunistic, and alternative investments, targeting the U.S. multifamily sector.

As part of this strategy, we’ve taken decisive actions to drive stockholder value, by:

AIMCO HAS DELIVERED SIGNIFICANT VALUE FOR STOCKHOLDERS

Since the December 2020 spin-off, Aimco has significantly outperformed its identified developer peer group, real estate market indices, and broader market indices, as evidenced in the following chart.

From an operating perspective, we have generated significant value across our stabilized portfolio and our development pipeline. For example, during the first half of 2022, we increased net operating income by 14.9%, and since the start of 2021, we have nearly tripled the Company’s future development pipeline.

Importantly, we have a clear plan to build on this progress and drive continued growth. We will remain primarily focused on multifamily housing with an increased allocation to value add and opportunistic investments. We will also continue to leverage the Company’s best-in-class platform, existing portfolio of value add and stable core properties, and an investment pipeline that leads to superior risk-adjusted returns.

Despite these strong results and clear and actionable strategy, the New Aimco Board is not standing still. We routinely consider all viable options to enhance and unlock stockholder value and remain committed to doing so going forward.

NEW AIMCO BOARD AND MANAGEMENT TEAM HAVE ENGAGED CONSTRUCTIVELY

WITH STOCKHOLDERS, INCLUDING LAND & BUILDINGS

Aimco is committed to open and constructive engagement with all stockholders, including Land & Buildings. Aimco has held more than 80 individual meetings with more than 35 current and prospective stockholders in the past 13 months, including stockholders that own in the aggregate more than 80% of Aimco’s outstanding shares of common stock, as well as multiple meetings with Land & Buildings, as described in the Company’s proxy statement. The New Aimco Board has demonstrated that we value and act on the feedback we receive.

The New Aimco Board and management team are focused on the future, executing a clear and effective strategy to enhance the value of your investment, while Land & Buildings’ complaints primarily relate to decisions made almost two years ago by the pre-spin Board of Directors and management team.

THE DIRECTORS ON AIMCO’S MAJORITY-INDEPENDENT, RECONSTITUTED BOARD

BRING HIGHLY RELEVANT SKILLS AND FRESH PERSPECTIVES

Aimco is seeking your support to vote FOR ALL of its three highly qualified, experienced directors at this year’s Annual Meeting: Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone.

The New Aimco Board is purpose-built, and its composition reflects our commitment to closely aligning the skill sets and experience of the Company’s directors with the needs of the Company and its stockholders. Importantly, the Board works closely with management and has been—and will continue to be—a significant agent of change overseeing the continued improvement of Aimco’s performance and valuation.

We are confident that our three highly-qualified nominees seeking re-election are the better choice to build on the success that Aimco has delivered. Aimco’s three director nominees bring highly relevant expertise and complementary skillsets, and our Board is unanimous in recommending that stockholders vote for our three nominees.

Mr. Leupp, an independent director and the Chairman of Aimco’s Audit Committee, has been an integral part of our Board since his appointment in December 2020 and brings capital markets, investment and finance, real estate, and development experience gained through his over 28 years as a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director focused on investments in publicly traded real estate securities and publicly traded REIT board service. Mr. Leupp is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Mr. Stein, an independent director and Chairman of Aimco’s Investment Committee, is a seasoned executive who brings real estate investment and finance, financial reporting, accounting and auditing, capital markets, and business operations experience, gained through his experience as a director of five publicly traded companies and Chief Financial Officer of three publicly traded companies. Further, having served on Aimco’s Board since October 2004, Mr. Stein has significant institutional knowledge of Aimco.

Mr. Stone, an independent director and Chairman of Aimco’s Nominating, Environmental, Social, and Governance Committee, is an experienced leader and has served on Aimco’s Board since December 2020 and brings investment and finance, real estate, development, property / asset management and operations, and capital markets experience gained through his over 30-year career investing and developing a variety of projects and joint ventures, including the management of one of the country’s largest master planned developments. He also brings publicly traded REIT board service.

PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT AND AIMCO’S FUTURE GROWTH PROSPECTS.

USE THE UNIVERSAL WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY TO VOTE FOR ALL THREE

OF AIMCO’S QUALIFIED AND EXPERIENCED DIRECTORS

The New Aimco Board is active, engaged and focused on continuing to grow Aimco and providing enhanced value for all our stockholders. We strongly recommend that stockholders vote FOR the Company’s three director nominees on the universal WHITE proxy card: Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone.

Your vote “FOR” our director nominees will help ensure that you, as an Aimco stockholder, have a Board acting in your best interest at all times.

On behalf of the New Aimco Board, we appreciate your investment and support.

Sincerely,

The Aimco Board of Directors

3 TSR calculation as of September 30, 2022

4 Includes AHH, CLPR, CSR, FOR, FPH, HHC, IRT, JBGS, JOE, STRS, TRC, VRE, and WRE (per AIV 2021 10-K) represents simple average

If you have questions or require any assistance with voting your shares, please contact the Company’s proxy solicitor listed below:

MacKenzie Partners, Inc.

1407 Broadway, 27th Floor

New York, New York 10018

Call Collect: (212) 929-5500

or

Toll-Free (800) 322-2885

Email: proxy@mackenziepartners.com

Forward Looking Statements

This document contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical statements of fact and those regarding our intent, belief, or expectations, including, but not limited to, the statements in this document regarding future financing plans, including the Company’s expected leverage and capital structure; business strategies, prospects, and projected operating and financial results (including earnings), including facts related thereto, such as expected costs; future share repurchases; expected investment opportunities; and our 2022 pipeline investments and projects. We caution investors not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements.

Words such as “anticipate(s),” “expect(s),” “intend(s),” “plan(s),” “believe(s),” “plan(s),” “may,” “will,” “would,” “could,” “should,” “seek(s),” “forecast(s),” and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, condition or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, among others, that may affect actual results or outcomes include, but are not limited to: (i) the risk that the 2022 preliminary plans and goals may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, (ii) the inability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the pipeline investments and projects, and (iii) changes in general economic conditions, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we believe that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements, which are based on management’s expectations and estimates, are reasonable, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be attained.

Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations include, but are not limited to: the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the Company’s business and on the global and U.S. economies generally; real estate and operating risks, including fluctuations in real estate values and the general economic climate in the markets in which we operate and competition for residents in such markets; national and local economic conditions, including the pace of job growth and the level of unemployment; the amount, location and quality of competitive new housing supply; the timing and effects of acquisitions, dispositions, redevelopments and developments; changes in operating costs, including energy costs; negative economic conditions in our geographies of operation; loss of key personnel; the Company’s ability to maintain current or meet projected occupancy, rental rate and property operating results; the Company’s ability to meet budgeted costs and timelines, and, if applicable, achieve budgeted rental rates related to redevelopment and development investments; expectations regarding sales of apartment communities and the use of proceeds thereof; the ability to successfully operate as two separate companies each with more narrowed focus; insurance risks, including the cost of insurance, and natural disasters and severe weather such as hurricanes; financing risks, including the availability and cost of financing; the risk that cash flows from operations may be insufficient to meet required payments of principal and interest; the risk that earnings may not be sufficient to maintain compliance with debt covenants, including financial coverage ratios; legal and regulatory risks, including costs associated with prosecuting or defending claims and any adverse outcomes; the terms of laws and governmental regulations that affect us and interpretations of those laws and regulations; possible environmental liabilities, including costs, fines or penalties that may be incurred due to necessary remediation of contamination of apartment communities presently or previously owned by the Company; activities by stockholder activists, including a proxy contest; the Company’s relationship with each other after the consummation of the business separation; the ability and willingness of the Company and their subsidiaries to meet and/or perform their obligations under any contractual arrangements that are entered into among the parties in connection with the business separation and any of their obligations to indemnify, defend and hold the other party harmless from and against various claims, litigation and liabilities; and the ability to achieve some or all the benefits that we expect to achieve from the business separation.

In addition, the Company’s current and continuing qualification as a real estate investment trust involves the application of highly technical and complex provisions of the Internal Revenue Code and depends on the Company’s ability to meet the various requirements imposed by the Internal Revenue Code, through actual operating results, distribution levels and diversity of stock ownership.

Readers should carefully review the Company’s financial statements and the notes thereto, as well as the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Item 1A of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021 and in Item 1A of the Company’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarterly periods ended March 31, 2022 and June 30, 2022, and the other documents the Company files from time to time with the SEC. These filings identify and address important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements reflect management’s judgment as of this date, and the Company assumes no (and disclaims any) obligation to revise or update them to reflect future events or circumstances.

We make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy of any projections, estimates, targets, statements or information contained in this document. It is understood and agreed that any such projections, estimates, targets, statements and information are not to be viewed as facts and are subject to significant business, financial, economic, operating, competitive and other risks, uncertainties and contingencies many of which are beyond our control, that no assurance can be given that any particular financial projections or targets will be realized, that actual results may differ from projected results and that such differences may be material. While all financial projections, estimates and targets are necessarily speculative, we believe that the preparation of prospective financial information involves increasingly higher levels of uncertainty the further out the projection, estimate or target extends from the date of preparation. The assumptions and estimates underlying the projected, expected or target results are inherently uncertain and are subject to a wide variety of significant business, economic and competitive risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the financial projections, estimates and targets. The inclusion of financial projections, estimates and targets in this presentation should not be regarded as an indication that we or our representatives, considered or consider the financial projections, estimates and targets to be a reliable prediction of future events.

Glossary and Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Financial and Operating Measures

This document includes certain financial and operating measures used by Aimco management that are not calculated in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or GAAP. Aimco’s definitions and calculations of these Non-GAAP financial and operating measures and other terms may differ from the definitions and methodologies used by other REITs and, accordingly, may not be comparable. These Non-GAAP financial and operating measures should not be considered an alternative to GAAP net income or any other GAAP measurement of performance and should not be considered an alternative measure of liquidity.

NET OPERATING INCOME (NOI) MARGIN: Represents an apartment community’s net operating income as a percentage of the apartment community’s rental and other property revenues.

PROPERTY NET OPERATING INCOME (NOI): NOI is defined by Aimco as total property rental and other property revenues less direct property operating expenses, including real estate taxes. NOI does not include: property management revenues, primarily from affiliates; casualties; property management expenses; depreciation; or interest expense. NOI is helpful because it helps both investors and management to understand the operating performance of real estate excluding costs associated with decisions about acquisition pricing, overhead allocations, and financing arrangements. NOI is also considered by many in the real estate industry to be a useful measure for determining the value of real estate. Reconciliations of NOI as presented in this document to Aimco’s consolidated GAAP amounts are provided below. Due to the diversity of its economic ownership interests in its apartment communities in the periods presented, Aimco evaluates the performance of the apartment communities in its segments using Property NOI, which represents the NOI for the apartment communities that Aimco consolidates and excludes apartment communities that it does not consolidate. Property NOI is defined as rental and other property revenue less property operating expenses. In its evaluation of community results, Aimco excludes utility cost reimbursement from rental and other property revenues and reflects such amount as a reduction of the related utility expense within property operating expenses. The following table presents the reconciliation of GAAP rental and other property revenue to the revenues before utility reimbursements and GAAP property operating expenses to expenses, net of utility reimbursements.

Segment NOI Reconciliation

Twelve Months Ended (in thousands)

December 31, 2021

December 31, 2020

Total Real Estate Operations

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements [1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements [1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

 
 

Total (per consolidated statements of operations)

$

169,836

 

$

67,613

 

$

151,451

 

$

61,514

 

 

Adjustment: Utilities reimbursement

 

(3,022

)

$

(3,022

)

 

(2,163

)

 

(2,163

)

 

Adjustment: Non-stabilized and other amounts not allocated [2]

 

(30,629

)

 

(21,158

)

 

(18,528

)

 

(17,676

)

 

Total Stabilized Operating (per Schedule 6)

$

136,185

 

$

43,433

 

$

130,760

 

$

41,675

 

 
 
 

Segment NOI Reconciliation

Three Months Ended (in thousands)

June 30, 2022

June 30, 2021

Total Real Estate Operations

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements [1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements [1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

 
 

Total (per consolidated statements of operations)

$

50,697

 

$

19,708

 

$

40,418

 

$

16,403

 

 

Adjustment: Utilities reimbursement

 

(1,347

)

 

(1,347

)

 

(1,128

)

 

(1,128

)

 

Adjustment: Assets Held for Sale

 

(1,823

)

$

568

 

 

(1,798

)

 

634

 

 

Adjustment: Other Real Estate

 

(4,383

)

$

1,317

 

 

(3,138

)

 

1,090

 

 

Adjustment: Non-stabilized and other amounts not allocated [2]

 

(10,040

)

 

(9,825

)

 

(4,589

)

 

(7,056

)

 

Total Stabilized Operating (per Schedule 6)

$

33,104

 

$

10,420

 

$

29,765

 

$

9,943

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Segment NOI Reconciliation

Six Months Ended (in thousands)

June 30, 2022

June 30, 2021

Total Real Estate Operations

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements [1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements [1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

 
 

Total (per consolidated statements of operations)

$

100,691

 

$

38,929

 

$

80,222

 

$

33,345

 

 

Adjustment: Utilities reimbursement

 

(2,903

)

 

(2,903

)

 

(2,473

)

 

(2,473

)

 

Adjustment: Assets Held for Sale

 

(3,628

)

 

1,159

 

 

(3,503

)

 

1,265

 

 

Adjustment: Other Real Estate

 

(9,378

)

 

(2,822

)

 

(6,324

)

 

(2,127

)

 

Adjustment: Non-stabilized and other amounts not allocated [2]

 

(19,455

)

 

(13,696

)

 

(8,903

)

 

(9,871

)

 

Total Stabilized Operating (per Schedule 6)

$

65,327

 

$

20,667

 

$

59,018

 

$

20,139

 

[1] Approximately two-thirds of Aimco’s utility costs are reimbursed by residents. These reimbursements are included in rental and other property revenues on Aimco’s consolidated statements of operations prepared in accordance with GAAP. This adjustment represents the reclassification of utility reimbursements from revenues to property operating expenses for the purpose of evaluating segment results and as presented on Supplemental Schedule 6. Aimco also excludes the reimbursement amounts from the calculation of Average Revenue per Apartment Home throughout this Earnings Release and Supplemental Schedules.

[2] Properties not included in the Stabilized Operating Portfolio and other amounts not allocated includes operating results of properties not presented in the Stabilized Operation Portfolio as presented on Supplemental Schedule 6 during the periods shown, as well as property management and casualty expense, which are not included in property operating expenses, net of utility reimbursements in the Supplemental Schedule 6 presentation.

About Aimco

Aimco is a diversified real estate company primarily focused on value add, opportunistic, and alternative investments, targeting the U.S. multifamily sector. Aimco’s mission is to make real estate investments where outcomes are enhanced through its human capital so that substantial value is created for investors, teammates, and the communities in which we operate. Aimco is traded on the New York Stock Exchange as AIV. For more information about Aimco, please visit its website www.aimco.com.

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Labor Hoarding Could be Good News for the Economy

by

PROVO, Utah — Chad Pritchard and his colleagues are trying everything to staff their pizza shop and bistro, and as they do, they have turned to a new tactic: They avoid firing employees at all costs.

Infractions that previously would have led to a quick dismissal no longer do at the chef’s two places, Fat Daddy’s Pizzeria and Bistro Provenance. Consistent transportation issues have ceased to be a deal breaker. Workers who show up drunk these days are sent home to sober up.

Employers in Provo, a college town at the base of the Rocky Mountains where unemployment is near the lowest in the nation at 1.9 percent, have no room to lose workers. Bistro Provenance, which opened in September, has been unable to hire enough employees to open for lunch at all, or for dinner on Sundays and Mondays. The workers it has are often new to the industry, or young: On a recent Wednesday night, a 17-year-old could be found torching a crème brûlée.

Down the street, Mr. Pritchard’s pizza shop is now relying on an outside cleaner to help his thin staff tidy up. And up and down the wide avenue that separates the two restaurants, storefronts display “Help Wanted” signs or announce that the businesses have had to temporarily reduce their hours.

added 263,000 workers in September, fewer than in recent months but more than was normal before the pandemic. Unemployment is at 3.5 percent, matching the lowest level in 50 years, and average hourly earnings picked up at a solid 5 percent clip compared with a year earlier.

roughly 20 percent and sent unemployment to above 10 percent. Few economists expect an outcome that severe this time since today’s inflation burst has been shorter-lived and rates are not expected to climb nearly as much.

are still nearly two open jobs for every unemployed worker — companies may be hesitant to believe that any uptick in worker availability will last.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about how big of a downturn are we facing,” said Benjamin Friedrich, an associate professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “You kind of want to be ready when opportunities arise. The way I think about labor hoarding is, it has option value.”

Instead of firing, businesses may look for other ways to trim costs. Mr. Pritchard in Provo and his business partner, Janine Coons, said that if business fell off, their first resort would be to cut hours. Their second would be taking pay cuts themselves. Firing would be a last resort.

The pizzeria didn’t lay off workers during the pandemic, but Mr. Pritchard and Ms. Coons witnessed how punishing it can be to hire — and since all of their competitors have been learning the same lesson, they do not expect them to let go of their employees easily even if demand pulls back.

“People aren’t going to fire people,” Mr. Pritchard said.

But economists warned that what employers think they will do before a slowdown and what they actually do when they start to experience financial pain could be two different things.

The idea that a tight labor market may leave businesses gun-shy about layoffs is untested. Some economists said that they could not recall any other downturn where employers broadly resisted culling their work force.

“It would be a pretty notable change to how employers responded in the past,” said Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research for the career site Indeed.

And even if they do not fire their full-time employees, companies have been making increased use of temporary or just-in-time help in recent months. Gusto, a small-business payroll and benefits platform, conducted an analysis of its clients and found that the ratio of contractors per employee had increased more than 60 percent since 2019.

If the economy slows, gigs for those temporary workers could dry up, prompting them to begin searching for full-time jobs — possibly causing unemployment or underemployment to rise even if nobody is officially fired.

Policymakers know a soft landing is a long shot. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, acknowledged during his last news conference that the Fed’s own estimate of how much unemployment might rise in a downturn was a “modest increase in the unemployment rate from a historical perspective, given the expected decline in inflation.”

But he also added that “we see the current situation as outside of historical experience.”

The reasons for hope extend beyond labor hoarding. Because job openings are so unusually high right now, policymakers hope that workers can move into available positions even if some firms do begin layoffs as the labor market slows. Companies that have been desperate to hire for months — like Utah State Hospital in Provo — may swoop in to pick up anyone who is displaced.

Dallas Earnshaw and his colleagues at the psychiatric hospital have been struggling mightily to hire enough nurse’s aides and other workers, though raising pay and loosening recruitment standards have helped around the edges. Because he cannot hire enough people to expand in needed ways, Mr. Earnshaw is poised to snap up employees if the labor market cools.

“We’re desperate,” Mr. Earnshaw said.

But for the moment, workers remain hard to find. At the bistro and pizza shop in downtown Provo, what worries Mr. Pritchard is that labor will become so expensive that — combined with rapid ingredient inflation — it will be hard or impossible to make a profit without lifting prices on pizzas or prime rib so much that consumers cannot bear the change.

“What scares me most is not the economic slowdown,” he said. “It’s the hiring shortage that we have.”

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In Global Slowdown, China Holds Sway Over Countries’ Fates

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BEIJING — When Suriname couldn’t make its debt payments, a Chinese state bank seized the money from one of the South American country’s accounts.

As Pakistan has struggled to cope with a devastating flood that has inundated a third of the country, its loan repayments to China have been rising fast.

When Kenyans and Angolans went to the polls in presidential elections in August, the countries’ Chinese loans, and how to repay them, were a hot-button political issue.

Across much of the developing world, China finds itself in an uncomfortable position, a geopolitical giant that now holds significant sway over the financial futures of many nations but is also owed huge sums of money that may never be repaid in full.

the lender of choice for many nations over the past decade, doling out funds for governments to build bullet trains, hydroelectric dams, airports and superhighways. As inflation has climbed and economies have weakened, China has the power to cut them off, lend more or, in its most accommodating moments, forgive small portions of their debts.

The economic distress in poor countries is palpable, given the lingering effects of the pandemic, coupled with high food and energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many borrowed heavily from China. In Pakistan, overall public debt has more than doubled over the past decade, with loans from China growing fastest; in Kenya, public debt is up ninefold and in Suriname tenfold.

two hydroelectric dams in southern Patagonia. Bradley Parks, the executive director of AidData, a research institute at William and Mary, a university in Williamsburg, Va., estimated that Argentina’s twice-a-year interest payment was $87 million in January and $137 million in July.

Argentina will owe a payment of over $170 million on the loan in January if interest rates keep rising at the same pace, he calculated. Argentina’s finance ministry did not respond to emails and text messages about the loan.

According to the I.M.F., three-fifths of the world’s developing countries are now having considerable trouble repaying loans or have already fallen behind on their debts. More than half the world’s poor countries owe more to China than to all Western governments combined.

For now, Chinese officials in poor countries face unpleasant jobs as debt collectors.

“You have a lot more influence when you’re providing the loan,” said Brad Setser, an international payments specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, “than when you’re begging for repayment.”

Abdi Latif Dahir in Nairobi, Emily Schmall in New Delhi, Skandha Gunasekara in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Salman Masood in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed reporting. Li You and Ana Lankes contributed research.

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