Jerome Powell gave his widely anticipated speech at Jackson Hole this morning. Despite much of the financial punditry thinking he needed to contort himself in unnatural ways to demonstrate his hawkishness; he gave a straight-forward speech about the business cycle advancing and being data-dependent. He…

The financial media can make it seem as though “everyone” has eliminated their call for a U.S. recession. We’ve seen Bank of America (yesterday) and the Federal Reserve staff make it known they no longer forecast a recession. But Bloomberg’s recent survey of economic forecasters…

Last night, Fitch (one of the three main credit rating agencies) downgraded the U.S. one-notch from AAA to AA+. Despite protests from the Treasury department and others, I think the downgrade is apt and a wake-up call to Washington. But, I don’t think it will…

The Federal Reserve conducts a quarterly survey of senior loan officers at banks to gauge the tightness or looseness of credit. The latest survey was released today which showed tighter credit conditions and an expectation for tighter credit conditions in the second half of 2023….

Three important pieces of U.S. economic data came out today; all stronger than expected, but with more context to consider; 2nd quarter real GDP; survey 1.8%, released 2.4%. It is normal for GDP to be strong before a recession, and this GDP isn’t that strong…

PDFOn Advisor Perspectives

Many economic indicators exhibit similar behavior surrounding recessions across their history. Below are eight charts of important U.S. economic indicators with the longest history and most reliable cyclical behavior. The charts show an economic indicator’s behavior 2-years before and after past recessions indexed to its…