JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said this week that storm clouds are on the horizon, and NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini told Fortune last month that even a variant of another Great Depression is possible.

Despite the consistent doomsday predictions, the U.S. economy added 263,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate remained near pre-COVID lows at 3.7%.

Some argue that the signs of resilience in the U.S. labor market mean that a soft landingwhere inflation is tamed without sparking a recessionis likely. But Harvard economist Jason Furman isnt so sure.

I do think a soft landing is possible, he told CNBC on Thursday. I just dont think its the most probable outcome for next year.

Furman argued that it could be difficult to bring inflation all the way back to the Feds 2% target rate in 2023, even if the economy falls into recessiondue to strong wage growth.  

That could lead to what the Harvard economist calls an incomplete hard landing, where the Fed is forced to engage in two separate interest rate hiking cycles.

It may not be once and done, Furman said. We may have an incomplete hard landing where we have a bit of a recession, we have inflation come down, but it comes down to something like 3.5%. And then the Fed needs to sort of do another tightening cycle to get that inflation down further.

Furman, who served as the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama, went on to argue that Fed officials will raise interest rates to between 5% and 5.25% by next year to fight inflation(for reference, the current Effective Federal Funds Rate is 3.83%). But he added that a number over six is completely conceivable if price stability proves difficult to come by.

Furman has become increasingly pessimistic about the prospects of the U.S. economy since June, when he argued that there was less than a 50% chance of a recession.

Last week, he explained that recent wage growth data shows that the U.S. has sticky underlying inflation. Average hourly wages grew at a 7.8% annual pace in November, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. 

The indicators are all now telling a similar story, Furman wrote in a Dec. 2 Twitter thread. A variety of wage measures are all saying underlying inflation is around 4.5%Some reason to believe this will fall but less than I thought before.

While a growing chorus of Fed critics have argued that the Fed is being too aggressive with their interest rate hikes and risk sparking a severe recession, Furman said in an October Wall Street Journal op-ed that the central bank shouldnt even consider changing course.

Until there has been tangible progress on inflation, not mere wishful forecasts, the Fed shouldnt let up, he wrote. 

And lately, the economist has been even more steadfast in his stance due to wage increases.
The favorable stories about the Fed being able to ease off and inflation coming downhave all involved some slowdown in wage growth, he tweeted last week. Less likely now.

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A 31-year-old electrician living in Ontario who asked not to use his full name, Phil said that there were two reasons he bought in.

I love the idea of regular Joes being able to join a project and conceivably help build it as well, he said. Hes participated in similar companies, including the decentralized wireless network Heliumalthough his hotspots never arrived.

The other reason, he told Fortune, was profit. Despite getting burned by Helium, he knew that if Hivemapper took off and the Honey token soared, he could make a handsome return as an early adopter.

After ordering his dashcam in the spring and being told it would ship in early summer, Phil has received a series of delay notifications from Hivemapper, which have also plagued other dashcam buyers. After launching in early November with 5,500 preorders, CEO Ariel Seidman said Hivemapper has only shipped 590 units. Only about 200 are currently online and operating, a figure reflected in the Hivemapper explorer and confirmed by Seidman.

Courtesy of Hivemapper

Hivemappers Honey token also has proven opaque. After forking over up to $649 for a dashcam, Hivemapper users on social media have questioned the real-world value of their rewards, which Seidman said the company is unable to comment on for legal purposes. Users have also raised doubts over Honeys skewed distribution structure, with 60% of the tokens total supply pre-mined and allocated for insiders, including employees and investors.

On Discord and Reddit, early customers are comparing Hivemappers woes to those of Helium, a project that promised to offer a real use case for cryptousers would receive tokens for setting up hotspots in their homes to create a wireless network for internet-of-things devicesbut has struggled to find adoption amid accusations of insider profiteering. The connection is not difficult to make, with Helium CEO Amir Haleem participating as an investor and adviser in Hivemapper.

As with other crypto projects that promise real utility, the pervasive worry is that Hivemapper will prove to be another top-heavy scheme where the insiders profit and the users are rug pulleda fear exacerbated by the fact that 90% of the preordered dashcams have yet to arrive.  

This has all started to seem scammy, Phil told Fortune. I jumped the gun hoping to be an early adopter and went in a little blind. Its amazing how greed can blind you.

Early setbacks 

Seidman, the CEO, said such concerns couldnt be further from the truth. He spoke with Fortune just a week after Hivemappers early November launch, which also happened to be the day after FTX halted customer withdrawals. The collapse of the exchange sent shockwaves through the crypto ecosystem, and Hivemapper was no different: The project is built on top of the Solana blockchain, a favorite of FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried, and Hivemappers lead investor was Multicoin Capital, which would end up losing over half its capital because of FTX.

Nevertheless, Seidman said he was confident. He had previously founded the company Gigwalk, a variation on Taskrabbits crowdsourcing for quick jobs, and he believed that the model of mass participation by userscombined with crypto rewardscould disrupt Googles stranglehold over street-level imagery.  

Courtesy of Hivemapper

As he explained it, hordes of Hivemapper users would passively collect footage from their daily commutes, which would then be processed and sold to companies like Redfin or Zillow. Not only does Seidman claim that it would be more affordable than Google Street Views API, but also that the data would be refreshed constantly. Like Helium, the platform would employ a burn-and-mint structure, where the tokens earned by users could be purchased by customers to spend on mapping data.

By selling a reported 5,500 preorders across 66 countries, Hivemapper got off to a strong start (and, with the dashcams hefty pricing, sizable early revenue as high as $3.5 million). At launch, the company shared that one of its early customers would be the city of Shreveport, Louisiana, which bought dashcams for its garbage trucks and planned to use the rewardsas well as an additional budget of $7,000to buy mapping imagery to better respond to customer service issues.

Seidman said Hivemapper had two other customers onboard that would be exclusively using the map image API. He declined to name them, but did say theyre both logistics companies.  

As with any marketplace, Hivemapper faces the chicken-and-egg obstacle where it needs enough mapping data to entice enterprise customers to purchase the imagery, but it needs enough customers to make the Honey token valuable and incentivize users to spend hundreds of dollars on a dashcam. With Hivemapper facing logistics challenges in manufacturing and delivering the hardware, progress has been slow.

The price of a token

Further complicating the matter is the fact that Seidman and Hivemapper cant comment on how much the Honey token might be worth, or how to actually trade it. On the official Hivemapper Discord, moderators delete messages about the financial nature of the token and repeatedly warn that any discussion about exchange, value, ROI, and buying/selling is not allowed. Seidman said that the Hivemapper Foundation will establish an oracle to determine the price of Honey, but it has yet to do so. 

The price analytics platform Dextools does show some transactions valuing a Honey token at around 24 cents, with limited liquidity of just under $4,000. 

Hivemapper started to distribute Honey to its 200-odd mappers on Nov. 10. Honeys token explorer gives an early sample of what users might expect in return. In Hivemappers latest distribution, on Dec. 1, coverage users earned anywhere from 25,000 tokens to a single token, based on the amount of data they collected by driving. For top earners, this could prove lucrative if they find a buyer in the low-liquidity market.  

The vast majority of listed transactions were for users who completed map editing and quality assurance worka task that can be completed from a desktop computer or smartphoneand were generally rewarded with a tiny fraction of a token.

Another critique has focused on Hivemappers tokenomics, with 60% of the tokens pre-mined and allocated to insiders, including 20% to employees, 15% to the company itself, and 5% to the affiliated foundation in charge of governance. Seidman said these tokens would be restricted over a two- to three-year period, and that the future capital raised from Honey tokens was necessary to scale the project. Still, it blows other crypto projects out of the water in terms of insider allocation. 

Users on the Hivemapper Discord questioned an incentive structure where nearly two-thirds of the tokens would be pre-mined, as one person wrote, out of thin air, while the rest eventually would trickle out to users. As it currently stands, four wallets hold over 99.7% of Honey tokens.

Phil, despite the projects setbacks, told Fortune hes remaining optimistic. 

In early December, nearly eight months after preordering his dashcam, he finally got a notification that it had been shipped. Now, hes more concerned about the Honey tokens and whether hell actually be able to trade them. He emailed the Hivemapper team, which has been responsive in the past. 

It gives me hope that this isnt another crypto shitcoin, he said.

The company responded to Phils email.

Unfortunately, the reply read, Hivemapper staff is not permitted to speculate on the value of Honey or discuss listing or exchange information.

Newly surfaced documents also strengthen the case that English buccaneer Henry Every  the target of the first worldwide manhunt  hid out in New England before sailing for Ireland and vanishing into the wind.

At this point, the amount of evidence is overwhelming and indisputable, historian and metal detectorist Jim Bailey, whos devoted years to solving the mystery, told The Associated Press. Every was undoubtedly on the run in the colonies.

In 2014, after unearthing an unusual coin engraved with an Arabic inscription at a pick-your-own-fruit orchard in Middletown, Rhode Island, Bailey began retracing Everys steps.

Research confirmed that the exotic coin was minted in 1693 in Yemen. Bailey then discovered that it was consistent with millions of dollars worth of coins and other valuables seized by Every and his men in their brazen Sept. 7, 1695, sacking of the Ganj-i-Sawai, an armed royal vessel owned by Indian emperor Aurangzeb.

Historical accounts say Everys band tortured and killed passengers aboard the Indian ship and raped many of the women before escaping to the Bahamas, a haven for pirates. But word quickly spread of their crimes, and English King William III under enormous pressure from a scandalized India and the influential East India Company trading giant put a large bounty on their heads.

Detectorists and archaeologists have since located 26 similar coins stretching from Maine to the Carolinas. All but three coins turned up in New England, and none can be dated later than when the Indian ship was captured.

When I first heard about it, I thought, Wait a minute, this cant be true, said Steve Album, a rare coin specialist based in Santa Rosa, California, who helped identify all of the silver Arabic coins found in New England.

But these coins have been found legitimately and in a few instances archaeologically, and every single one predates the sacking of the ship, said Album, who has lived in Iran and has traveled widely in the Middle East.

Detectorists have also unearthed a gold nugget weighing 3 grams (a tenth of an ounce) slightly heavier than a U.S. penny from a potato field perched on a hilltop in seaside Little Compton, Rhode Island.

Theres no documented evidence that naturally occurring gold has ever been found in the state. Bailey and other experts believe that the nugget likely originated somewhere along Africas Gold Coast, a center for the slave trade in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Adding to the intrigue, two silver Arabic coins were recovered not far from the nugget, and Every is known to have seized a considerable amount of gold while sailing off the coast of West Africa.

The latest evidence putting Every on American soil isnt just metallic it includes paper and pixels.

Bailey had already found records showing that the Sea Flower, a ship used by Every and his men after they ditched the vessel theyd used in their murderous raid, arrived in 1696 in Newport, Rhode Island. Hes since surfaced documents that show that the pirate captain was accompanied by three Rhode Islanders he took aboard from another pirate vessel when he fled India. All three came ashore with Every in the Bahamas on March 30, 1696, and Bailey said that they essentially served as getaway drivers in exchange for plunder.

Captured pirates William Phillips and Edward Savill testified on Aug. 27, 1696, that one of two ships that left the Bahamas went to Virginia and New England before reaching Ireland. Critically, Bailey said, the records clarify a muddy timeline that long has been misinterpreted by historians to suggest Every lingered two months on the Caribbean island something hed never have done as a fugitive.

Theres no way he stayed in the Bahamas to sit on the beach and work on his tan while waiting to be captured, Bailey said. Indeed, Every was in New England for over a month weighing his options for starting his life anew in the colonies or going back home to England.

Everys exploits have inspired Steven Johnsons book Enemy of All Mankind, and the final installment of PlayStations popular Uncharted video game franchise. Earlier this year, Sony Pictures released a movie adaptation starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg and Antonio Banderas.

Baileys next challenge: figuring out what happened to Every after the trail ran cold following his arrival in Ireland on June 20, 1696. Its the mysterys elusive final chapter one he hopes to detail in a forthcoming book about the cold case.

Were chasing down the lost history behind one of the greatest crimes of the 17th century, he said.

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A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 43% of U.S. adults say they approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, while 55% disapprove. Thats similar to October, just weeks before the Nov. 8 elections that most Americans considered pivotal for the countrys future.

Only about a quarter say the nation is headed in the right direction or the economy is in good condition. Both measures have been largely negative over the course of the year as inflation tightened its grip, but were more positive through much of Bidens first year in office.

Mishana Conlee said she tries to be optimistic about the coming year, but she thinks things are going to the gutter because our president is incompetent and not mentally fit for the White House. The 44-year-old in South Bend, Indiana, said shes frustrated about rising expenses when shes living paycheck to paycheck as a dietary aide at a nursing home.

The more I work, I just cant get ahead, Conlee said. Thats just all there is to it.

She doesnt blame Biden for the state of inflation, but I feel like hes not doing anything to change it, said Conlee, an independent who voted for former President Donald Trump. Bidens not doing us any good.

The Biden administration in its second year in the White House relished economic growth, a series of legislative wins and relative success for the presidents party in the midterms. But that has yet to translate to glowing reviews from a pessimistic public.

I dont understand why his approval ratings are so low, said 56-year-old Sarah Apwisch, highlighting the administrations investments in infrastructure and computer chip technology.

Apwisch recognizes that its been a tough year and that prices are higher, but shes hopeful because of the midterm results as a Republican-turned-Democrat who worries about the Make America Great Again movements influence on the GOP.

Were headed in the right direction, said the Three Rivers, Michigan, resident who works for a market research companys finance department. She is eager to see Democrats press forward on a wide-ranging agenda, including codifying abortion rights.

Even as Republicans took control of the House, Democrats defied historical precedent to stunt GOP gains and even improve their Senate majority, which was cemented with this weeks runoff win for Sen. Raphael Warnock, the lone Democrat in Georgia this year to be elected statewide.

Glen McDaniel of Atlanta, who twice voted for Warnock, thinks the Biden administration has moved the country forward and weathered the economic storm as well as possible.

I think that this administration has done as much as they can to fight inflation, the Democrat said.

But McDaniel, a 70-year-old medical research scientist, also thinks the nation faces social headwinds that he wants Biden and the party to prioritize.

I think that the Democrats can be a little bit more aggressive in legislating on things like marriage equality, reproductive rights and voting reform, he said.

The poll shows majorities of Democrats and Republicans alike think things in the country are on the wrong track, likely for different reasons.

But Democrats have shown renewed faith in Biden, boosting his overall job approval rating from a summer slump. Even so, the 43% who approve in the new survey remains somewhat depressed from 48% a year ago and much lower than 60% nearly two years ago, a month after he took office.

Seventy-seven percent of Democrats, but only 10% of Republicans, approve of Biden.

While many Americans dont entirely blame Biden for high inflation, AP-NORC polling this year showed Biden consistently hit for his handling of the economy.

As in recent months, the new poll shows only a quarter of U.S. adults say economic conditions are good, while three-quarters call them bad. Nine in 10 Republicans, along with about 6 in 10 Democrats, say the economy is in bad shape. Ratings of the economy have soured amid record-high inflation, even as Biden touts falling gas prices and a low unemployment rate at 3.7%.

Joshua Steffens doubts that the job market is as good as indicators show. The 47-year-old in St. Augustine, Florida, said he has been unemployed and struggling to find an information technology job since September.

Even though theyre trying to claim that things are looking good, Steffens said, in the trenches, it definitely does not appear that its so accurate.

Bidens shopping and vacationing, captured on broadcast news, is tone deaf, said the Republican, who called the president a habitual liar.

Steffens said he and his wife are experiencing rising expenses for electricity and groceries, and relying on his wifes income has put a strain on their holiday shopping. He doesnt think Biden is handling high inflation well.

If he has policies that hes trying to push through, then theyre not working currently, Steffens said.

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The poll of 1,124 adults was conducted Dec. 1-5 using a sample drawn from NORCs probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

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