How Private Sector Balance Sheets Changed Recessions
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2019
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can the U.S. economy have a recession without it turning into a crisis? In the old days, such garden-variety recessions were fairly common. These days, less so. But why is this? And can we go back to the old-style soft recessions? The issue, arguably, is that private sector balance sheets (both debts and assets) have grown so large relative to incomes, that the value of financial assets swamp effects from changing incomes.
On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with David Levy of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center about his new report called Bubble Or Nothing about how the economy works in a world of gigantic balance sheets and extreme risk taking.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | With Bloomberg you get the story behind the story, the story behind the global birth rate, |
| 0:04.7 | behind your EV batteries environmental impact, behind sand. Yeah, sand, you get context. |
| 0:10.8 | And context changes everything. Go to Bloomberg.com to get context. Hello and I'm Tracey Allaway. |
| 0:24.0 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. |
| 0:31.0 | I'm Joe Wiesenthal. |
| 0:33.4 | And I'm Tracy Allaway. |
| 0:35.6 | Tracy, obviously we're in a moment in which there's a lot of debate about whether we're |
| 0:42.2 | headed for an imminent recession maybe in the next few months or maybe in the next year. |
| 0:49.2 | Right. I think we're recording in the week that Jamie Diamond was talking about how we're definitely heading for a recession |
| 0:56.3 | The only question is timing which is kind of always true I guess but it definitely feels like the chorus of people talking about a potential recession is getting louder. |
| 1:07.4 | Yeah, between the trade war, the Curven version, which as of right now is actually uninverted some weak data in the US |
| 1:17.2 | There's clearly we're back on recession watch there's no real doubt about that, but as you point out, we're always |
| 1:25.8 | heading for recession and Jamie Diamond pointed out, it's only a matter of time. |
| 1:30.8 | At some point we'll have another one. So to say we're headed for one but we don't |
| 1:34.6 | know one is kind of obvious. Right and I think we're still in the longest economic recovery on |
| 1:39.6 | record now right so we're kind of due for something to happen. |
| 1:45.0 | But I think there's a more perhaps interesting and consequential question for |
| 1:51.4 | investors in the economy than merely when will the recession happen. |
| 1:57.6 | What's that? Well I think the bigger question is when the recession hits what's it going to look like? |
| 2:05.6 | Because we've been scarred recently or recent recessions have all been pretty brutal in some sense. |
| 2:13.4 | So if you think about the recession that started in 2007, |
| 2:17.2 | the financial crisis, that was horrible. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.