US economic growth is leveling off after the recovery in 2021. The opposition party wants to use it to retake power and is calling it a disaster to undermine optimism in the economy. Business owners fear a drop in demand and scale back hiring.
Same here. People talk also about the "2020 pandemic recession", and at least in IT I didn't notice it at all. So, yeah, maybe we (software developers) are the privileged ones. Touching wood.
At least in the markets, the NASDAQ is down roughly 30% YTD.
Which is still 50% up from 3 years ago and 80% up from the "crash" of 2018
Right, but financial markets are forward-looking (or "leading economic indicators"). They don't encode the current state, they encode a consensus prediction for some time period in the future. In this case, the stock market is pricing in a sharp downturn in profits (and margins) over at least the next few quarters, and I don't believe it's even finished.