How to stay resilient during an economic downturn

The legendary ball-drop in Times Square at the end of 2018 marked a decade since we’d experienced one of the worst recessions in modern memory. A few blocks away, nervous Wall Street-types wondered if it also marked the end of a long cycle of expansion. They were joined by a range of individual and institutional economic forecasters who are still arguing over whether we’ll see the start of another recession in 2019. Or in 2020. Or in 2021.

The feeling’s a bit different on Main Street: Many C-suite executives are already anticipating recession in the next few years and quietly gearing up for it. They see the flashing yellow lights: Ballooning corporate debt. Government yields that are dramatically lower than the previous long-run average. Negative returns on the Standard and Poor’s 500. Lower GDP growth in China relative to what it was before 2010.

The question for these executives, then, isn’t whether to prepare, it’s how to prepare.