Right now, 60 percent of Americans believe that a recession is "very or somewhat likely in the next year", and the reason why that figure is so high is because there is already a tremendous amount of evidence that the economy is slowing down all around us.  As I have been documenting repeatedly, U.S. economic performance has not been this dismal since 2008 and 2009, and the slowdown seems to be gaining pace as we move toward the end of 2019.  So it really shouldn't be a surprise that a solid majority of the country thinks that the next recession will officially begin very soon.