2019 US recession?

The yield spread--the difference between the yield on 10 year treasury bonds and 2 year bonds--is a sort of guide to economic conditions 2 years down the line.  It's not perfect.  For example, the yield spread (the green line in the chart above) forecast a slowdown in 1997-1999, but the actual recession only came at the end of 2000.  It forecast a much stronger recovery in 2008-2012 after the GFC than in fact happened (although after very deep recessions, the economy's response to stimulatory measures is much weaker and slower than after shallow recessions, because of the negative effects of the loss of confidence.  You can't "push on a string".)

Now it's forecasting a slowdown, at the minimum.  Yet GDP growth is accelerating.  Part of that acceleration is due fiscal stimulus ( the result of Trump's massive tax cuts) and part is due to the strengthening recovery in the rest of the world.  Plus, there is not a perfect fit between the yield spread and growth.  Other forces play a part in expanding or contracting growth.

The rising Fed Funds rate is also pointing towards a slowdown.  The chart shows that 12 month change in the Fed Funds rate, inverted (because rising interest rates lead to falling growth and vice versa) Notice how the 1997-1999 aberration between the yield spread and growth is explicable as a result of moves in the Fed Funds rate.  The rising Fed Funds rate (i.e., shown as declining in the chart below) points towards an imminent US slowdown.  This will be exacerbated as the effects of fiscal stimulus fade.  And it will be worsened by a trade war.  A recession in 2019 seems increasingly plausible.

➥(I forgot to put into the second chart that the Fed Funds rate has been plotted with a 21 months lag, just as the yield spread has)