Unpredictable Recessions

From federalreserve.gov

Are recessions unpredictable, or do we just not know how to predict them? We know that long-short Treasury term spreads have historically been useful predictors of recessions within the next year. Logically, if today's term spread is good at predicting recessions that occur between today and a year from now, the corresponding forward term spread – today's market-implied level of the term spread at a future date – should be good at predicting recessions that occur between a future date and a year from that date. Instead, as this note shows, forward term spreads provide little information about recessions more than ... (full story)