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Of that nature? Not really, since the financial crisis was mechanically distinct. A big economic doldrums? Sure, but then I would have thought most people had that priced in even before the Trump tariffs last year, let alone the Strait of Hormuz closure this year. What did people think the western demographic trends implied for global economics?
We're in the start of the broader first world demographic retirement wave, where many Western (and 'western' Asian) countries aren't just older on average, but the generation than makes it older is starting to retire and leave the work force. For example, here was the demographic pyramid of Germany in 2023.. The retirement age in Germany is 67. That disproportionately wide bar that was 60-64 three years ago is now 63-67 now. They are starting to transition out of the work force, taking their accumulated expertise and economic inputs with them and turning into retirees instead who draw more from the public purse. That next ten years will be even larger cohorts of the demographic-industrial base. Germany is not unique.
The implications of demographic age-out have never been optimistic. Fewer workers contributing to taxable economic growth, higher expenditures for the welfare state dominating public spending that could otherwise go to economic investments, loss a large amounts of highly-trained and experienced knowledge to be replaced by less experienced younger demographics who have often suffered from youth unemployment dynamics due to worker protections benefiting the now-retiring or policies to import specialists from abroad. I wouldn't go so far to say inherently recessionary, but if you remove part of the foundations of your economic growth, you are going to have less economic growth, which was the longer-term impact of the great recession in many places.
And this was before various macroeconomic disruptions and trade flow changes that have ended the neoliberal consensus. COVID 19 alone was enough that many countries were already relooking supply chains that had prioritized cost-efficiency over reliability. Well, that change was and is going to lead to slower economic growth. The Trump tariffs were part of an effort to fundamentally reshape the global economic system by reducing the role of the US as consumer of last resort for other country's exports, and it is still shaking out as the European Union gears up for a trade war with China as it doesn't want to absorb all the redirected Chinese exports that the US used to import. The US-Iran War has led to the eyebrow-raising twin blockades of the US blocking Iranian exports that mostly went to China, and Iran blockading everything else which mostly goes to also China (and also other asian countries). The consequence is global energy prices raising for everyone, but not raising the same for everyone, with the biggest cost-increases headed for the energy-import-dependent manufacturing-export countries, epecially when national stockpiles currently being released dry up.
And even this is before other, easily foreseeable, major macro-economic disruptions that could happen in the future. The Russia-Ukraine War has progressed beyond pushing Russian oil onto the black market as expanding Ukrainian long-range strike capabilities decrease what Russia can push onto the sea at all. A PRC invasion of Taiwan is liable to destroy the high-end chip economy for a decade, and that's before the PRC and US target eachother. The European Union could have significant structural crisis in the next few years if Euroskeptic parties on the rise in France and Germany take over in one or both. Expanded naval trade piracy / 'taxation' at various Eurasian maritime chokepoints, mass migration destabilizations... heck, even (or especially) AI, which may not be a net-negative, is going to lead a lot of economic disruption and/or ruin in its wake.
The global economy was already going to have to undergo uncomfortable economic dislocations of where growth occurred just from demographic age-out. It just so happened to be occuring concurrently with the transition away from the post-cold-war global neoliberal order, which prioritized cost-minimization over other considerations. The de-prioritization of cost-minimization was always going to further complicate global finances. There just so happen to be another half dozen economic asteroid events approaching as well, for various reasons.
I guess I don't have a good view for what everyone else is seeing, but at least here (unspecified southern US), wholesale electricity prices today seem to be within 10% or so of the averages for 2024 and 2025. Gas prices rose probably $2.00 per gallon after the start of the Iran conflict, but checking today are only up about half that (probably a bit more if you average the last month), and have stayed lower than 2022 highs the whole time. (Not expressing an opinion on that, er, adventure here, just observing).
But the utility company does expect total grid energy usage to double within 5 years or so, mostly on the basis of unspecified "data center" usage. I have trouble believing all of that is actually going to manifest, but it's probably better to be proactively investing in infrastructure than the reverse.
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