“Prelude to Recession”: the Dallas Fed’s Unsettling Charts

“Prelude to Recession”: the Dallas Fed’s Unsettling Charts
by Wolf Richter • February 22, 2016


[font color="blue"]The “sharp cross-sector split.”[/font]

“The views expressed are those of the speaker and should not be attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System,” it says on the front page of the presentation. Institutional CYA. We get that.

Also let’s clarify upfront that Evan Koenig, Senior Vice President and Principal Policy Advisor at the Dallas Fed, did not forecast a recession. No Fed official, and no economist employed by any Fed entity, would ever publicly do that. For them, publicly, recessions exist only in the rearview mirror. For them, publicly, economic growth goes on forever.

Yet they know what’s going on. They have enormous resources at their fingertips. But by forecasting a recession publicly, they would deflate hype and sap economic confidence and could thus cause a recession – or a market crash. So no way. No recession warning from them, ever.

However, their concerns leave footprints in the economic muck, and this is one of them. ..............(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/02/22/prelude-to-recession-the-dallas-feds-unsettling-charts/