The November 2023 issue of The Levy Forecast® highlights the multiple paths to a 2024 recession and the critical role that one profit source—personal saving—is likely to play in causing the next downturn. In addition, the report explains how and why the economy's inflated balance sheets will prove vulnerable when the expansion ends.

There has been no need to parse clues from Fed speeches to see the widely evident U.S. inflationary pressures that have been dictating monetary policy in 2022. Indeed, this client bulletin—written shortly after Fed Chair Powell told reporters in May that a 75-basis point hike was not under active consideration—argued that incoming data would pressure the Fed to accelerate its rate-hiking schedule.

China faces an economic challenge that is much bigger, carries more profound financial implications, and is more immediate than global investors realize. China’s extreme real estate speculation is only the latest in a series of unsustainable excesses that by now have all begun to unwind, making China’s economy rapidly lose its ability to generate profits.

"The world economy is headed toward a collision," wrote David Levy in this excerpt from the March 2022 issue of The Levy Forecast®. Rising U.S. interest rates, driven by a powerful economy and potent inflation, are on course to surpass the limit of what global financial stability can bear. Fed rate hikes will trigger global financial instability before they significantly slow U.S. inflation or economic growth.

David Levy in February detailed the critical influences on consumer behavior to expect in 2022—both the positives arguing for a large boost to profits from a falling personal saving rate into the summer and the negatives at risk of dominating consumer trends later in the year.

In the wake of CPI inflation accelerating to a multidecade high in December 2021, a great many economists and other assorted analysts were forecasting that inflation would decline in the next few months and trend profoundly downward over the course of 2022. In this January 2022 client bulletin, Robert King wrote that market participants—and FOMC members—hoping for a spontaneous, lasting disinflationary trend to emerge and remove pressure for interest rates to rise would in all probability be disappointed as the year played out.

At the beginning of summer, U.S. payrolls were not growing as fast as markets had expected. However, the reason was not slowing demand and diminished pressure to increase pay. It was the opposite.

In this excerpt from the April 2021 issue of The Levy Forecast®, David Levy discusses how difficult adjustments and financial struggles in the next several years will sow the seeds of a great economic boom.

Consensus earnings estimates were revised sharply higher in the run-up to the first-quarter earnings season, making some investors worried that actual earnings would disappoint. Robert King wrote in April that disappointment was unlikely and that large, favorable increases in guidance for future quarters were to be expected.

The high-flying 2021 U.S. economy is a mixed blessing for emerging market (EM) economies. John Nahra wrote in April to expect EM assets, currencies, and economies broadly to underperform those of the United States for the balance of 2021.