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Unlearning recession myths

Jun 30, 2026, 10:50am EDT
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Recession: The Real Reasons Economies Shrink and What to Do About It, by Tyler Goodspeed.

A former White House economist and current chief economist at ExxonMobil, Goodspeed sets out to demolish a number of recession myths, namely that they necessarily follow unsustainable booms, are otherwise cyclical, or that they “cleanse or restructure economies, the way wildfires clear forests of their dead wood,” a Wall Street Journal reviewer wrote.

This is not necessarily reassuring, though: Recessions are rarely caused by a single shock event, but rather multiple interlocking crises, meaning they are “fundamentally unforecastable,” Goodspeed writes. Buy Recession from your local bookstore.

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