Amid a supply chain crunch and rising inflation, several economists have argued that recent drops in consumer sentiment suggest a recession is looming. David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Alex Bryson of University College London, in a report, pointed to signals before the 2008 recession. They noted that the “wisdom of crowds,” rather than experts or intellectuals, is generally superior in making such predictions. “Consumer expectations indices from both The Conference Board and the University of Michigan predict economic downturns up to 18 months in advance in the United States, both at national and at state-level,” they wrote in the paper. “All the recessions since the 1980s have been predicted by at least 10 and sometimes many more point drops in these indices.” Over the past six months, there are “clear downward movements in consumer expectations” that “would suggest the economy in the United States is entering recession now (Autumn 2021)—even …