Headlines

• In the words of IMF economists writing in 2019, ‘Recessions are not rare: economies are in a state of recession 10-12 per cent of the time. What is rare is a recession that is forecast in advance’
• Mindful of the difficulty involved, and given stronger-than-expected GDP data in a number of major economies since we published our Global Outlook, Autumn 2022, in this week’s Recession Watch we revisit our global recession call
• The very strong signals offered by record low levels of consumer confidence and near-double digit rates of inflation, combined with the tendency for early estimates of macroeconomic data to be too optimistic in the early stages of a downturn, mean that we are likely to retain our global recession call as a central case in our forthcoming Global Outlook, Winter 2022
• However, the news flow about both growth and inflation has been net positive over the past few weeks. We are minded to increase the weight we attach to a scenario where the US escapes recession; and signs that the EA has managed to substitute away from Russian gas to a greater extent than we had imagined, mean that the single currency bloc may suffer a less severe recession than we had at first imagined

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