Obviously, as Sumner says, we're most unlikely to be able to predict exactly when because they're generally not predictable. But we can try to work through a few ideas to see whether it's going to be soon or not. And we have just gone through that Great Moderation thing. A greater concentration of the economy into a more volatile sector means greater volatility in GDP itself--more booms and more busts. Thus the Great Moderation was caused by the fall in manufacturing as a portion of the US economy and given that we don't expect that to reverse thus we'd rather assume that the future will be moderate as well.

Source: Forbes March 05, 2017 11:44 UTC