before, it was always, "in a recession, buy dollar stores and walmart stock". Now, this paradigm is breaking, and it's obvious why:

The lower incomes keep getting squeezed beyond resistance, to the point where they end up on the street (or, in Canada, in suicide booths; it's not just the Simpsons in which Groening successfully predicted things...). No more quarters for the dollar store.

At the same time, the well-off and the rich are not just fine, they're thriving - obviously, because the system is built on transfering wealth from the poor to the rich, as profits have to keep pace with competitors' profits, or you get bought out or suqeezed out. No other choice than to hyperexploit everything you can get your hands on. (which, also, fuels the forever wars, which always target the countries that intend to gain economic independence; but that's another matter.) This has always been this way, of course, and was already on course to break around the turn of the last century; it got a reprieve, but now that "final squeeze" is back.