Jamie Dimon, David Solomon, and Jeffrey Gundlach are still worried about a recession — and warn investors are too complacent

• Some Wall Street heavyweights aren't ready to rule out a US recession yet.
• JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, Goldman's David Solomon, and DoubleLine's Jeffrey Gundlach are among them.
• Their worries include cash-strapped consumers, a softening job market, and a fiscal hangover.

Recession fears have faded this year as the US economy keeps chugging along, stocks have soared to record highs, and the Federal Reserve has signaled it could begin cutting interest rates within months.

Yet several top-tier executives, economists, and investors still see reason to worry — and aren't ready to rule out a hard landing yet.

Here's a roundup of recent recession warnings from six experts:

1. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO

There's a long history of investors being caught off guard by sudden downturns, Dimon told CNBC this week.

"Before any crash, you felt great, and then still things change," the billionaire bank chief said.

Dimon said the American economy might still be floating on the fumes of aggressive government spending, and interest rates could still climb higher.

While the market is pricing in a "70% or 80% chance we will have a soft landing," he said, "I give it half that."

Dimon emphasized the full impact of fiscal stimulus, quantitative tightening, budget deficits, and geopolitical turmoil wouldn't be felt for years.

"I'm kind of cautious about everything," he said, adding that a recession could rattle weaker banks and slam the private credit and real estate sectors.

2. David Solomon, Goldman Sachs CEO

"The world is set up for a soft landing," Solomon said at a UBS conference this week. "My own view is it's a little bit more uncertain that."

The investment-banking titan said the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars would likely be inflationary and a "headwind to global growth."

Solomon added that several business leaders had told him that spending was down among lower-income consumers, and that part of the economy was a "little bit softer."

He was nodding to the fact that resilient consumer spending has helped stave off a recession so far, but households are being squeezed by both inflation and steeper borrowing costs, raising concerns their shopping sprees won't last much longer.

3. Ellen Zentner, Morgan Stanley's chief US economist

The US might escape a recession this year but it's certain to suffer one eventually, Zentner told CNBC.

"We will have a hard landing at some point. I guarantee you that," the veteran economist said.

Zentner underscored the delayed impacts of rates rising and the Fed shrinking its balance sheet.

"We haven't yet seen all of the tightening impacts from monetary policy," she said.

4. Steve Hanke, Johns Hopkins professor

The US economy is headed for a recession if history is any indication, Hanke told Business Insider this week.

The professor of applied economics flagged that the US money supply has contracted by 4.5% since March 2022.

"We have only had four episodes of sustained contraction in the US money supply, and each one of those episodes was followed by a recession," he said.

5. Paul Dietrich, B. Riley Wealth Management's chief investment strategist

"We're still on the path to recession," Dietrich told Business Insider in a recent interview. "No one seems to notice that the economy is cooling and there are risks to the economy everywhere."

Several economic indicators have fallen into "deep recession territory," he said. Dietrich pointed to people's stints of unemployment lasting longer, and record amounts of credit-card debt meaning consumers could soon hit their credit limits and be forced to stop spending.

Dietrich also predicted a tough fight to wrestle inflation down to the Fed's 2% target, and flagged the risk of 1970s-style stagflation.

6. Jeffrey Gundlach, DoubleLine Capital CEO

"I think recession is closer than most people think," Gundlach said in a recent YouTube video. "I think there's going to be one before we get to 2025."

Gundlach said the US economy seems to be softening, and "a lot of early indicators have flipped toward recession."

The billionaire fund manager pointed to recent labor-market data showing declines in working hours, longer periods of joblessness, and rising unemployment in some states.

Gundlach also predicted the next recession would trigger a "really extreme" fiscal and monetary response that would cause the federal deficit to spike and hammer the US dollar.

"It's going to be a very, very bad economic situation, fiscal situation — and that goes along with accelerating the trend towards another reserve currency," he said.