Greenspan Sees >50% Chance Of Recession, Media Pre-Reports By 13 Months

In an interview Sunday, former Fed chief Alan Greenspan reaffirmed he does not believe the U.S. economy is currently in a recession, but for the first time, he indicated a better than 50% chance that the current slowdown would become a recession.

"We would have to see signs of this intensification: there are some, but not many yet," he said. "Therefore ... I would not describe the situation we are in as a recession, although the chances that we'll have one are more than 50 percent."

The news that this is new news might be surprising to AP readers, who may have inferred from various breathless reports in early 2007 that Greenspan was forecasting recession even then.  In truth, he had estimated 3:1 odds against a recession, but a rash of alarmist, blatantly inaccurate headlines like "Greenspan Warns Of Likely U.S. Recession" helped inspire the biggest one-day stock sell-off since 9/11.

This time around, the zone is likely sufficiently flooded that another spate of apocalyptic headlines seems less likely to trigger significant incremental panic.

And after last week's farcically shark-jumping "Great Depression" piece, it's hard to imagine the journalistic ante being upped any further without becoming truly asinine.

So we have that to look forward to this week.