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Recession Ledger

An independent record of the downturn that began in 2008 and the years after it. Every forecast here is dated, and checked at the foot of its page.

Subject

Economic predictions

The recession calls, year by year, and how each came out.

Every forecast on this site is kept with its date and checked at the foot of the page. The calls made here were early more often than they were wrong, and wrong more often than the people making them admitted at the time; both are on the record.

Read them in order and a pattern appears: the direction was usually right, the timing was usually early, and the thing that intervened was usually the central bank.

9 essays, 2016โ€“2022

20224 essays

  1. An apocalypse upon us: how much more can one summer take?

  2. US economy crashes into recession: the first-quarter 2022 GDP report

  3. Seeing it all come together: bonds, the yield curve and the end of the Fed's taper

  4. The next recession is here: reading the fourth-quarter 2021 GDP report under the hood

20191 essay

  1. Bond primer: does an inverted yield curve indicate a recession?

20172 essays

  1. A list of seven troubles assailing the US economy heading into summer 2017

  2. The inevitability of economic collapse: the flaws that were not fixed after 2008

20162 essays

  1. This graph says it all: the 2016 recession was already here

  2. 2016 economic predictions: the year of the Epocalypse