Headwinds. Economic uncertainty. Deceleration. Obstacles. Challenges. Six seven. These are just some of the words executives use to avoid uttering that big, scary R word: recession.

For many finance professionals, recession is the Voldemort of the corporate finance world. Just saying it out loud might feel risky, as if speaking it could summon the Dark Lord. And maybe they’re right. When President Trump didn’t rule out a recession in the US in March 2025, the Dow fell almost 900 points.

With these sorts of euphemisms, “you can take the sting off of it a little bit,” Dennis Gannon, VP of research at Gartner, told CFO Brew.

While there is no globally recognized definition of a recession, according to the World Economic Forum, in 1974, US economist Julius Shiskin defined a recession as “two consecutive quarters of declining growth.” These days the US uses a slightly more flexible definition from the National Bureau of Economic Research: “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.”

In Q1 2025, 124 companies mentioned recession in earnings calls, according to Seeking Alpha. This was while the S&P 500 was down 4.3% and the Nasdaq was down 10.5%. Then in Q2, as markets rebounded, only 16 firms used the word.

“The lack of mentions of an economic downturn could reflect a growing sense of confidence among the firms, amid easing inflation and stable consumer spending,” Seeking Alpha News Editor Sinchita Mitra wrote last August. “However, it could also be a shift in corporate messaging to avoid using alarmist messaging amid persistent economic challenges.”

Keep reading.—JK

Economists and business leaders say a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has them concerned about the central bank’s independence.

In a video statement on Sunday, Powell announced that the Department of Justice served subpoenas to the Fed, “threatening a criminal indictment” over comments he made last summer related to building renovation projects, the costs of which have grown significantly.

But the investigation isn’t really about the renovation work, according to Powell. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” he said.

The DOJ probe is “extremely chilling,” Janet Yellen, former Fed chair and Treasury secretary, told CNBC, adding she was “surprised the market isn’t more concerned.”

Keep reading.—AZ

Like your favorite bosses, even phishers are setting up meetings that could’ve been an email.

Cybersecurity teams are facing an increase in calendar-invite phishing messages, IT leads recently shared with IT Brew. That’s a particularly dangerous tactic, given how invites exist beyond the inbox.

“Even if you’ve done an effective job of teaching your employees not to click on email links, there’s just an informality to invites that I think makes the social awareness more challenging,” Marty Barrack, chief legal and compliance officer at healthcare IT company XiFin, said.

An influx in invites. In an email to IT Brew, Google Workspace spokesperson Ross Richendrfer wrote that Google has seen a “definite uptick in the last year” in meeting-invite phishing tactics. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, for example, alerted users in October of Google invite attacks.)

Keep reading on IT Brew.—BH

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