It isn’t the potential of downturn itself that has them alarmed — downturns come and downturns go, but whatever happens, chief executives, like cats, tend to land on their comfortably padded feet.
Instead, the cause of their fear appears to be something more fundamental. As Alan Murray, the CEO of Fortune, writes in a cover story chronicling the C-suite anxiety: “More and more CEOs worry that public support for the system in which they’ve operated is in danger of disappearing.” They’re worried that when the next recession breaks, revolution might, too. This could be the hour that the ship comes in: The coming recession might finally prompt the masses to sharpen their pitchforks and demand a reckoning.