Yield curve inversion 'less ominous' than it might seem, says Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman.
(Image credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

President Trump's tariff-happy trade war with some of the United States' major commerce partners, including China, is often considered a boogeyman as fears of a global recession dance in the heads of economists and investors. But Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman doesn't lay the entire onus at the foot of the Oval Office.

Instead, Krugman said that the trade war is just "one ingredient" amid a smorgasbord board of reasons for what could be a looming international economic downturn. He wrote something similar in 2018 when he argued that there was nothing as "obvious" as the housing bubble to predict a forthcoming crash, but that there were several mid-sized bubbles that could lead to a tumble.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.