Our baseline view is still that the US economy will avoid a recession, albeit only narrowly. Furthermore, if there is a recession, we suspect it would be a fairly modest one because the most cyclical parts of the economy have barely recovered from the last downturn. There just isn't much excess spending to purge. What could trigger a severe recession is another credit crunch on the scale of what we saw in late 2008 and early 2009. With Greece teetering on the brink of default and financial stresses building, a full-blown credit crunch can't be ruled out.