Two top economists said that despite contrary predictions, a recession will likely hit the United States in the near future.
“Some economists argue that the strength of the labor market—as well as household balance sheets—will keep the economy strong enough to avoid a recession,” wrote Lakshman Achuthan and Anirvan Banerji, the co-founders of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, in a Friday opinion article. “We disagree,” they wrote, saying that “it remains our expectation that the U.S. economy will enter a recession this year.”
That’s because, in part, because of the Federal Reserve’s recent decisions to raise interest rates to their highest levels in decades in a bid to slow inflation levels not seen since the early 1980s, they wrote. The rate hike appears to have worked to an extent as the Labor Department last week confirmed that the consumer price index that measures inflation fell 0.1 percent in December to 6.5 percent….