This is Planet Money from NPR.

The economy is in a confusing place.

There are some pretty troubling signs, including the most recent collapse of several banks

and also inflation remaining stubbornly high.

But then there are things like consumer spending, which continues to be strong.

In uncertain economic times like these, we go back to our bread and butter, economic indicators.

And some of the best indicators can be found in one of the biggest financial market

places in the world, with countless bets being placed minute by minute by traders scrutinizing

every economic data point and every utterance by policymakers.

That is the market for US government bonds.

And right now the signals from the bond market are flashing in a strange mysterious way.

Hello and welcome to Planet Money, I'm Daryl Mwards.

For down the show we're going to bring you two episodes of our Daily Economics podcast

The Indicator, both looking at what these strange signals from the bond market are telling us.

We've got a story on a big recession indicator, the yield curve, and a story on how normally

safe and secure treasury bonds can turn ugly.

After the break Adrian May and I will head off on our explorations of the bond market, starting

with the yield curve.

Of all the economic indicators, there is one that is predicted every recession since 1969

with no false positives.

That is a remarkable track record of economic doom predicting.

We are talking about the yield curve.

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