Photo of Larry Summers Larry Summers (Photographer: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg)

Larry Summers is at it again. The coal mine canary is warning of recession as the Federal Reserve tries to curb inflation without triggering a slump.

For now, economists put the chance of a recession developing over the next year at 27.5 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey earlier this month. Still, the downbeat call by the Harvard professor and former Treasury Secretary isn't easily dismissed, even by optimists. Summers famously cautioned that the federal government was being overly generous with its Covid-19 bailout payments, and he dismissed the idea that inflation would be "transitory" well before that attitude was fashionable.

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