In April 2022, with the Ukraine war in its early stages and inflation raging near a four-decade high, Deutsche Bank became the first major investment bank to predict a U.S. recession. The 153-year-old German institution’s chief economist, David Folkerts-Landau, argued the rise of inflation would ultimately force the Federal Reserve to rapidly hike interest rates—“to err on the side of doing too much”—sparking a “mild” recession by late 2023 or early 2024.
Folkerts-Landau waffled on the mild part of that forecast in the following months. He feared the U.S. may experience a more “major” recession when the Fed was struggling to control inflation, but eventually switched back to his original “mild” outlook.
