Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz chief economic advisor, warned this week that strategists may be off in predicting that a recession next year would be "short and shallow."
The economist doesn't necessarily consider a recession to be inevitable but suggested market watchers should be open to the potential for a range of outcomes beyond the short-and-shallow consensus outlook.
Analysts often try to make troubling news less so, which happened last year when forecasters deemed inflation to be transitory, El-Erian said in an op-ed Monday in the Financial Times. Now, he continued, strategists say the economy faces a recession but predict it will be shallow and brief.
El-Erian urged caution about this oft-cited view.