Probability of U.S. recession rises to 20 percent: BAML

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[January 22, 2016]  LONDON (Reuters) - The likelihood of the U.S. economy slipping into recession in the coming year has risen to 20 percent, but a repeat of the 2008-09 great recession "is a big stretch", Bank of America Merrill Lynch said on Friday.

Even the one-in-five chance of a normal recession remains low, the bank's U.S. economists said, as they cut their 2016 growth forecast to 2.1 percent from 2.5 percent.

"We cannot rule out a recession in the next year. Accidents will happen and we are concerned about the lack of policy ammunition to deal with a major shock," said Ethan Harris and Emanuella Enenajor in a note on Friday.

"However, when markets are in such a fragile state there is a temptation to lose sight of the economic fundamentals. To us, the economy is okay and recession risks are low," they said.

BAML had previously put the chance of a recession at 15 percent.

Stocks around the world have had one of their worst starts to a year on record, with slumping oil prices, deepening concern over China, and the Federal Reserve's first interest rate hike in a decade all spooking investors.

A recession is typically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. The U.S. economy ground to a virtual standstill in the fourth quarter of last year, according to many estimates, and the manufacturing sector is already in recession.

Earlier this week, economists at Citi said the risk of a global recession was rising, Morgan Stanley put the probability at 20 percent in a worst case scenario and French bank Societe Generale said it was 10 percent and rising.

(Reporting by Jamie McGeever, editing by Nigel Stephenson)

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