Welcome to Staglflation 2.0

Why Even America’s CEOs Are Bracing for the Squeeze

Bullion.Directory precious metals analysis 24 October, 2025
By Peter Reagan
Financial Market Strategist at Birch Gold Group

In fact, with Christmas coming up, many Americans are starting to think ahead toward the holidays… And overall, they’re not liking what they see.

They’re concerned by the same things that many CEOs are already planning for right now.

What CEOs are saying

In a nutshell, CEOs are saying that they aren’t feeling as confident about the U.S. economy.

In fact, Tom Ozimek at The Epoch Times tells us that CEO confidence fell to 48 in the fourth quarter of 2025, down from 49. This is based on their survey of 130 CEOs of “major U.S. companies.” Why so pessimistic? Turns out “nearly two-thirds of corporate leaders warned of stagflation ahead.”

Now, according to The Conference Board, who took that survey, “A reading below 50 reflects more negative than positive responses.”

But that feeling isn’t anything that we weren’t already dealing with, was it?

It’s no surprise that average folks are feeling that way. After all, nearly two-thirds of the CEOs surveyed (64%) said that they expected to see an economic slowdown within the next 12-18 months.

Even the 10% minority of optimistic CEOs surveyed who say that the U.S. economy will “see solid economic growth” also see something ugly coming along with it: “a ‘notable’ increase in inflation risk.” And that’s if we don’t see a downturn or outright recession.

In other words, the best case scenario sees serious inflation according to our business leaders. The same people who watch the economy like hawks so they can make plans for the futures of their businesses.

Now, I’m probably biased, but frankly I trust CEOs and their economic outlooks a lot more than I trust establishment reports. It seems like economists always have an agenda (politics first, data second). Bureaucrats have their own motives to put as much lipstick on the pig as necessary to make it look pretty. CEOs though? By definition, they’re going to be a lot less out of touch with reality. Otherwise they’d be out of a job.

You have to understand, though, that many companies are trying to keep those trends under their hats. The only reason we got this much out of them is because the survey was anonymous. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, “a summary of economic conditions,” revealed an interesting angle. Andrew Moran with The Epoch Times writes,

…businesses have been facing higher input costs at a faster pace due to rising import costs. Firms are also experiencing increasing input pressures from services, including health care, insurance, and technology solutions.

Why haven’t they already passed on all those costs to you and me? The only reason seems to be because businesses are trying to keep you from being so angry that you shop somewhere else… even if the price hikes aren’t their fault.

Not exactly optimistic thinking, is it?

What the average American knows

No, it’s not optimistic thinking, but it is the real world situation that many (most?) Americans have been living in for a number of years now: slow economic growth (if any) along with inflation.

There’s a word for that situation that you may have heard before: Stagflation.

And it’s the worst of both worlds.

But this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen stagflation. Granted, many of us were too young to remember much about it, but the U.S. went through ugly stagflation in the 1970s.

What was the 1970s characterized by, at least as far as the economy goes (no need to delve into polyester suits, Saturday Night Fever, and punk rock here)?

During the stagflation portion of that decade, the U.S. dealt with stumbling attempts at economic growth characterized by high unemployment, and we also dealt with stubborn inflation.

Now, one of the factors driving the 1970s unemployment levels was oil prices. That’s less of an issue today, but we’re seeing economic changes such as job elimination due to the rise of AI.

Regardless of the reason, higher than normal unemployment makes it difficult for people to make ends meet and to feed their children.

But it wasn’t just oil prices that drove the 1970s stagflation…

The other driver of stagflation

Regardless of the first driver which puts an economy into shock, the second driver is the one that we should sit up and pay attention to.

According to Britannica Money, the other factor that caused stagflation was “prolonged loose monetary policy.” Translation: The Federal Reserve kept interest rates too low (primarily to facilitate government spending).

I’ve talked about this many times before. Government spending, government debt, causes the creation of more currency which is the very definition of inflation (the debasement and devaluation of the dollars in your pocket and in your bank account).

So, of course, loose monetary policies (or loose credit policies or easy monetary policies or whatever other euphemism you want to use for drunken money-printing) cause inflation. It’s inevitable. They can’t do anything else.

It’s worth noting that something happened earlier in the 1970s, before the stagflation hit, that allowed the stagflation to really take hold and, then, linger. Investopedia refers to it as the “collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement,” but that’s just an academic way of referring to Nixon removing the U.S. dollar from the gold standard.

Once the U.S. dollar could no longer be exchanged for gold (which is what the Bretton Woods agreement mandated), the dollar was only worth what the government made it worth based on how much they created through printing more and through borrowing more.

That’s what always happens during stagflation: policy panic and currency debasement, which we experience as inflation.

The biggest factor

I would argue that the removal of the gold standard was the bigger factor in the cause of inflation because while the gold standard was in place, stagflation didn’t really have a way to be able to take hold because inflation couldn’t happen at nearly the same rate.

To give you perspective, Rutgers University professor of economics Michael D. Bordo notes,

Between 1880 and 1914, the period when the United States was on the “classical gold standard,” inflation averaged only 0.1 percent per year.

Imagine point one percent inflation instead of the nine point one percent inflation rate that we saw at one point in 2022.

It’s almost laughable how absurdly higher inflation is now than in 1900.

And if you think about it, it’s this very awareness of how precious metals maintain their purchasing power, resisting inflation because of that purchasing power, that draws long-term savers to them.

Long-term savers aren’t thinking in terms of short-term economic forecasts. They’re playing the long game to ensure their purchasing power is preserved for years, for decades, despite economic boom and bust cycles.

To start your due diligence into precious metals, get your free Precious Metals Information Kit from us.

This article was originally published here

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