I'm not much for tinfoil hattery, but I know enough about the stock market and the lax enforcement of rules governing collusion, price fixing, insider trading, and insider market manipulation to know wealthy elites play foul habitually. I therefore suspect more than a little bit that all this talk of “recession” from their contingency has been to spark a self-fulfilling prophecy that shifts social power of work and capital back to their hands. They miss the days when they could roll around the office and leverage the ever-smoldering threat of being fired and being made destitute over their perpetually stressed employees, which they're gleefully seeking to do hereafter as the economy they're desperately shorting sinks lower.
Maybe what's needed is folks need to collectively band together to create a long-term “unemployment fund” for people fired for refusing to go back to the office so they can hold on a little longer to find remote work. 10/10 would donate $200 to this fund if it existed.