Soft Landing Or Deep Recession? Whatever Is On The Horizon Isn’t Like Any Other Downturn The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by another 75 basis points Wednesday as it continues to compete on two fronts: combating inflation and trying to prevent a painful recession. Historically, the central bank’s attempts to thread the needle for the U.S. economy haven’t gone well. More than two-thirds of the country's post-World War II recessions have been caused by the Fed raising interest rates too quickly, University of Chicago economics professor Austan Goolsbee told NPR last week. There is a slim margin for error and no consensus on where the economy is headed: Economists pegged the odds of a recession next year at about 50% in a July Bloomberg survey, up from 30% in June. Rising interest rates and fears of a recession are already impacting commercial real estate, with major lenders becoming more conservative and some developers putting planned projects on hold. As industry players prepare for the coming slowdown, they are finding it difficult to pinpoint a useful historical analogy, but the closest comparison may come from the start of this century. 
“In terms of the size of economic correction that we could possibly see, it could be something comparable to the dot-com bust where, at the national level, actually there wasn't very much of a change in economic growth, but because of all the other elements that were at play ……  Read the full story here. | 
