The keynote presentation by economist Elliot Eisenberg could have been titled “I’m a little nervous, but I’m not terrified,” since he said just that multiple times Tuesday morning when pointing out turbulent trends connected with consumers’ financial health and other parts of the economy.

When Eisenberg conceded that an official recession might arrive sometime in the coming weeks or months, the expert who styles himself as the Bowtie Economist said, “What would make me happy is that it’s a soft landing that’s a little bumpy.”

“How bad does it get? I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t be here with you,” Eisenberg added later, drawing laughter from a room full of attendees at Open Lending’s Executive Lending Roundtable in Austin, Texas.

Eisenberg tries to mix “graphs and laughs” when going through economic trends and data relevant to the credit union and other auto finance company executives who made the trip to the gorgeous Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in the Lone Star State’s capital.

What triggered the economist’s nervousness so often was his explanation of how the economy continues to perform relatively well.

It’s all because, in Eisenberg’s analysis, it’s being fueled by quickly dwindling savings that originally came from pandemic-era federal stimulus payments.

“This is a full-employment economy. If you don’t work, you don’t work because you’re lazy,” Eisenberg said. “There’s ample work for everybody. People are still hiring. How can it be that we have full employment and yet savings rates are in the trash can?”

When using various Federal Reserve data to show how savings have pushed consumer spending in recent quarters, Eisenberg said, “That’s what’s troubling, because you can’t go much longer like this. We’re running out of gas.”

“We’re using our credit cards more,” he said. “We’re not saving as much money. We’re using our balance sheet, if you will, to maintain our standard of living that we got accustomed to during COVID because of all the stimmy checks. Don’t pay your rent. Don’t pay your mortgage. Child tax credits. I’m not bashing the government here. That’s not the point. But we had all of this artificial money that came in and made life really quite pleasant, and now they want to keep it up and they can’t.”

Eisenberg said consumers appear to be spending from stimulus savings at a clip of $100 billion per month, prompting the San Francisco Fed to predict nearly all of the money the federal government bestowed during the pandemic would be drained by the end of the third quarter.

And the end of the third quarter is Saturday.

“Consumer spending is softening, and that’s where the real concern is,” Eisenberg said.

“Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation. We hadn’t had inflation like this in more than 20 years. It caught us all by surprise,” he said later in his hour-long presentation.

While much of Eisenberg’s data wasn’t too rosy, he emphasized that it won’t be a “barn-burning recession.”

Eisenberg also sees the Federal Reserve raising interest rates one more time this year, perhaps right before the holiday season arrives in December.

“Essentially, the more we have, the more we spend,” he said.

Will consumers spend on a vehicle out of want or sheer necessity? Perhaps finance companies should remember what Eisenberg said multiple times during this week’s presentation.

“I’m a little nervous, but I’m not terrified.”

Nick Zulovich is senior editor at Cherokee Media Group and can be reached at nzulovich@cherokeemediagroup.com.