Recessions aren't inevitable, and economists don't agree on their causes

Because economists don't know why recessions start, they can't predict when one will start

Ben Bernanke got a big laugh from economists in Atlanta on January 4.  A few minutes after Janet Yellen said, “I don’t think expansions just die of old age,” he replied, “I like to say they get murdered.” All right, not that funny. But the nerdy repartee between the past two Federal Reserve chairs at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association reveals how central bankers think about recessions—and says something about how likely it is that the US will tip into one over the next year.

The open secret of the economics profession is that its practitioners don’t have