Are declines in stocks and oil indicating imminent recession?

Last week, the S&P 500 fell 3.8 percent, its second consecutive weekly decline. It is now in negative territory for the year-to-date.

Oil also fell. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 10.6 percent, its seventh consecutive weekly decline.

With both stocks and oil in a downtrend, is a US recession imminent? Derek Thompson at The Atlantic suggested not.

If you’re going to worry, you should worry about three things: exports, China, and maybe the looming shadow of corporate debt. But nothing in the economy seems to predict an imminent recession.

Thompson quoted Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, on the possibility of an imminent recession.

“I’m reading some of the weirdest stuff [about] how a recession is right around the corner. Nonsense,” he said. “Recession is so far in the distance, I can’t see it.”

Not that Kudlow's remark is likely to be very useful.

In December 2007, Larry Kudlow, then a talking head for the business network CNBC, proclaimed, “There’s no recession coming. It’s not going to happen.” That same month, the economy plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.