stanley druckenmiller prominent hedge fund investor and billionaire founder of duquesne family office thinks the us economy is on the brink of a recession and also predicts there will be a hard landing according to a report what happened druckenmiller cited a variety of factors including a fall in retail sales and the turmoil in regional banks that prompted him to accelerate his forecast for a recession reported bloomberg i am not predicting something worse than 2008 druckenmiller said however to be a good risk manager its just naive not to be openminded to something really really bad happening he added the investor defined a hard landing as unemployment exceeding 5 corporate profits declining at least 20 and rising bankruptcies druckenmiller’s comments come at a time when wall street is treading carefully in the wake of a barrage of developments that include the debt ceiling crisis inflation data release and the federal reserves future policy path the spdr sp 500 etf trust spy closed 044 lower on monday while the invesco qqq trust series 1 qqq lost 063 later in the day reports emerged about president joe biden and republicans failing to reach any consensus regarding raising the debt limit but agreeing to hold another meeting on friday druckenmiller believes its a challenging time to make economic forecasts and that he sees no fat pitches when it comes to offering investment ideas youre going to have unbelievable opportunities in the next couple of years he said theres a lot of dispersion within industries and just make sure to preserve your capital until they present themselves positions the billionaire investor said treasuries are off the table given where they are trading in relation to the fed funds rate he is short the dollar and also owns gold and silver according to the report druckenmiller believes copper the housing industry biotech firms and companies focusing on artificial intelligence or ai could be big beneficiaries as the economy emerges from recession he believes artificial intelligence could lead to 100 billion companies ai is very very real and could be every bit as impactful as the internet said the investor who owns stocks like nvidia corporation nvda and microsoft corp msft on fed policymakers have left themselves less wiggle room as against previous economic cycles said druckenmiller who has been a longtime critic of the federal reserves easy monetary and fiscal policy especially in the past few years we basically wasted all our bullets he said according to the report read next tesla upstart affirm rivian airbnb why these 5 stocks are drawing investors’ attention today