Full record
MisseconomyThe US enters a recession during 2023, and it is a severe one.
A scored prediction by Tom Nash, made on .
Scored prediction
Misseconomy“if I'm looking at 2023 as a whole year I'm very pessimistic I think a recession is not only unavoidable it's going to be very very violent”
The US enters a recession during 2023, and it is a severe one.
- Made on
- 2022-12-01
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 5 / 5
- Effect on score
- -4.41
What counted as right
- Status
- resolved
- Settled on
- 2023-12-31
A US recession begins or is under way at some point in calendar 2023, as dated by the NBER business-cycle committee (or, absent an NBER call, at least two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth within 2023). The 'very very violent' qualifier is a severity gloss; the record resolves on whether the recession occurred at all in the window.
Criterion is fully determinate and evidence is one-sided: no US recession began or was under way in calendar 2023 on either the primary (NBER dating) or the fallback (two consecutive negative real GDP quarters) test. The 'severe / very very violent' severity gloss is moot because the underlying event did not occur. One caveat logged for transparency, not a conflict: NBER dates peaks retrospectively and has been known to announce many months after the fact, so in principle a future NBER call could still date a 2023 peak - but as of 2026-07-25, more than two and a half years past the deadline, no such call exists, and the GDP path (four consecutive positive quarters, none negative) makes one implausible. GDP figures are the current revised vintage; real-time 2023 vintages were also positive in every quarter. No conflicting credible evidence found. No outcome value assigned - scoring is a later stage.
Sources
Evidence of what happened
NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee chronology (checked 2026-07-25) states the most recent US business-cycle peak occurred in February 2020 and the most recent trough in April 2020. No peak has been dated in 2022, 2023 or 2024, so no NBER-dated recession began or was under way at any point in calendar 2023.
FRED series USREC (NBER-based Recession Indicator for the United States) equals 0 for every month from June 2022 through June 2025 inclusive - i.e. zero recession months anywhere in 2023 (retrieved 2026-07-25 via fredgraph.csv?id=USREC&cosd=2022-06-01&coed=2025-06-01; 37 monthly observations, all 0).
Fallback criterion (two consecutive negative real GDP quarters within 2023) also fails: BEA real GDP percent change from preceding quarter, seasonally adjusted annual rate, was +2.9% (2023Q1), +2.5% (2023Q2), +4.7% (2023Q3), +3.4% (2023Q4) - all four quarters positive. Retrieved 2026-07-25 from FRED series A191RL1Q225SBEA (BEA NIPA Table 1.1.1, current vintage).
BEA GDP landing page, the underlying official source for the quarterly real GDP growth figures cited above.
Corrections
No public corrections.
Effect on the score
-4.41- How sure they sounded
- 97%
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 5 / 5
This page shows the scored prediction as published; the site doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Where this came from
The US enters a recession during 2023, and it is a severe o…- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- August 2, 2026
- Made on
- 2022-12-01
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources