SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A Recession Is Coming (Eventually). Here's Where You'll See It First:
Last week's report on second-quarter gross domestic product showed that the economy slowed last spring. It also came exactly 10 years since the Great Recession ended, making this officially the longest expansion in American history. (Well, probably. More on that in a second.) So perhaps it's no surprise that forecasters, investors and ordinary people are increasingly asking when the next downturn will arrive.
Economists often say that "expansions don't die of old age." That is, recessions are like coin flips — just because you get heads five times in a row doesn't mean your next flip is more likely to come up tails.
Still, another recession will come eventually. Fortunately, economic expansions, unlike coin-flip streaks, usually provide some hints about when they are nearing their end — if you know where to look. Below is a guide to some of the indicators that have historically done the best job of sounding the alarm.
[...] One caveat: Economists are notoriously terrible at forecasting recessions, especially more than a few months in advance. In fact, it's possible (though unlikely) that a recession has already begun, and we just don't know it yet.
"Historically, the best that forecasters have been able to do consistently is recognize that we're in a recession once we're in one," said Tara Sinclair, an economist at George Washington University. "The dream of an early warning system is still a dream that we're working on."
The article goes on to list and expand upon these indicators which are:
1: The Unemployment Rate
2: The Yield Curve
3: The ISM Manufacturing Index
4: Consumer Sentiment
5: Choose Your Favorite
Do you think the US economy is on the verge of a recession? What have you done, if anything, in preparation for the eventual downturn?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday July 30 2019, @02:50AM (1 child)
So when someone says that recession is nigh, we should be asking what assumptions about our near future economy are sufficiently wrong to trigger their recession scenario? Here, the story peculiarly talks only about indicators of recession, not causes of recession.
Another consequence of this theory is that any economy that doesn't have perfect knowledge of the relevant parts of its world, both present and future, will experience recessions and boom cycles naturally. Irrationality and hysteria can make these cycles much more exaggerated (since they're by definition a substantial distortion of information about the economy), but their absence doesn't make the variation go away.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:47PM
That's not a disaster - I've joined at least a dozen religions attempting to find the right incantation to get that to happen, and that part of the world still hasn't dropped off into the pacific.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves