At the end of last week, the three-month Treasury bills' yield rose above the yield for 10-year Treasuries for the first time since 2007, prompting warnings that the U.S. is headed for recession later this year or in early 2020. That's because, historically, such “curve inversions” have tended to precede major economic slowdowns by about a year. Yet, for reasons that relate both to the current determinants of the yield curve and the underlying state of the economy, the latest curve inversion could prove to be an exception to the rule -- unless a misreading creates a detrimental self-fulfilling prophecy. Yield-curve ... (full story)