Chamath @ 00:24:52Right
economypolitics
In the second half of 2022, leading into the November 2022 U.S. midterm elections, the U.S. economy will be in a slowdown with relatively high interest rates and elevated consumer prices, creating a very unfavorable economic backdrop for the incumbent Democratic Party.
we're going to be going into the back half of the year in a midterm election where the economy is slowing, interest rates are high, prices are high. This is a horrible setup for the.View on YouTube
Explanation
Evidence from 2022 shows that the macroeconomic backdrop going into the November midterms matched Chamath’s description:
- Prices were high: U.S. CPI inflation averaged ~8% in 2022, the highest since the early 1980s, peaking at 9.1% in June. It was still 7.7% year‑over‑year in October 2022, just before the midterms. (theworlddata.com)
- Interest rates were high (relative to recent history): By November 2, 2022, the Federal Reserve had raised the federal funds target range to 3.75–4.00%, up from near‑zero at the start of the year—the highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. (federalreserve.gov)
- The economy was slowing: Real GDP growth cooled from 5.9% in 2021 to 2.1% in 2022, with slightly negative real GDP in the first half of 2022 that raised recession fears, and much lower year‑over‑year growth by late 2022. (bea.gov)
- Unfavorable for the incumbent party: Coverage of the 2022 elections notes that voters were dealing with historically high consumer prices, gas prices, and interest rates, with inflation the top issue and broad disapproval of Biden’s handling of the economy and cost of living—conditions described as weighing down Democrats’ political prospects. (en.wikipedia.org)
Democrats ultimately outperformed expectations in seat counts, but Chamath’s prediction was about the economic environment leading into the midterms, not the final electoral outcome. On the core factual points—slowing economy, high rates, high prices, and a politically unfavorable economic backdrop for the incumbent Democrats—the prediction was borne out by subsequent data and contemporaneous analysis.