Almost eight decades later, the consultancy company that bears his name declared “the next recession will be caused by the deflating housing bubble.” By February 2007, it predicted problems in the subprime-mortgage market would spread “to virtually all financial markets.” In October 2007, it saw imminent recession — the slump began two months later.

The Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, based in Mount Kisco, New York, and helmed by Jerome’s grandson David, is again more worried than its peers. Its half-dozen analysts attach a 65 percent probability of a worldwide recession forcing a contraction in the U.S. by the end of next year.

That call runs counter to the forecasts of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The two banks posit an expansion that has plenty of room to run.

“Clearly the direction of most of the recent global economic news suggests movement toward a 2015 downturn,” chairman David Levy told clients in an Oct. 23 edition of a monthly forecasting report, which at over 60 years purports to be the oldest of its kind.

Source: MSN