The question went viral this week after Paul Westra, an analyst at Stifel Financial Corp., raised the possibility in a research note. Bloomberg on Tuesday published a news story about the implied forecast, noting that the “this doesn’t just bode ill for restaurants, but could point to trouble across the economy as a whole.” The main takeaway, we’re told, is that the US could slide into a recession in early 2017. There’s only one problem: the possibilities for different macro scenarios between today and six months forward are close to infinite, thanks to the complexity of an $18 trillion economy and the constancy of an uncertain future.
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