“Warning lights are flashing. Whether it’s this year or next year, the odds of another economic downturn are high — and growing,” she wrote. “Congress and regulators should act immediately to tamp down these threats before it’s too late.”

Writing in a post on the website Medium , Warren said that American consumers and businesses have taken on too much debt. And though President Trump likes to tout progress on manufacturing, the numbers tell a different story. That sector has fallen into a recession, according to the Federal Reserve, she said.

Senator Elizabeth Warren warned on Monday that another economic crisis could be on the horizon, and is arguing that her economic proposals can head it off.


The former Harvard Law professor has issued such warnings before. In 2006, Warren wrote that the subprime mortgages once hailed as “creative” were beginning to look creative “in the horror-movie way” as foreclosures rapidly spiked in the Boston area. The nationwide housing market would go on to crash shortly afterward, spurring the Great Recession and 2008 financial crisis.

Warren says that families today are stretching themselves with student loans, mortgages, and increasingly risky car loans, meaning just small bumps in the economy could have an amplifying effect as Americans stop being able to afford their obligations. Warren also pointed to so called “leveraged lending” to corporations, high-risk loans that she argued look worringly similar to the pre-recession subprime mortgage loans.

Taken together, Warren warned, “a single shock could bring it all down.”

She called on Congress and regulators to begin implementing economic reforms immediately, though such changes would take years to be fully realized. She listed a series of proposals she has promoted throughout her campaign, including a minimum wage increase, cancellation of student debt for millions, and free public college and university tuition.


On the corporate lending front, Warren called on existing regulators to do their job, arguing federal agencies created to monitor and regulate financial markets are not living up to their mandate in the Trump era.

She said her green manufacturing plan could stave off further declines in the manufacturing sector while beginning to transition the US to clean energy.