Predicting recessions is hard. There are simply too many incalculable, volatile variables—as we’ve seen with the war in Ukraine and COVID-19—that can throw a wrench in even the most well-respected of economists’ forecasts. And as Albert Edwards, a strategist at French investment bank Société Générale, explained in a recent note: “History shows that, to the (limited) extent economists do actually predict a recession, its tardiness usually means they give up waiting just at the point it arrives.”
Deutsche Bank’s economists aren’t giving up their recession prediction, however, despite the ongoing resilience of the U.S. economy. As the first major investment bank to forecast a U.S. recession back in 2022, experts at the 153-year-old German institution have stuck to their guns this year, warning of another unpleasant and unavoidable American “boom and bust cycle.”
