His concerns lie with the Herculean task facing the Federal Reserve. The central bank is rapidly tightening interest rates to throttle inflation, but risks fostering a sharp pullback in economic activity as it boosts borrowing costs.

While the Fed is hopeful it can engineer a so-called "soft landing," where inflation comes down without a recession, Summers is skeptical.

"When inflation has been high and unemployment has been low, soft landings represent a kind of triumph of hope over experience," he said.

The final word: One definition of a recession is when the economy experiences two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product. In the first three months of the year, output declined at an annual rate of 1.6%. That raises the stakes for Thursday's first look at GDP data for the second quarter.

The recession call that economists and policymakers watch for, however, comes from the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee, which defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months."

His concerns lie with the Herculean task facing the Federal Reserve. The central bank is rapidly tightening interest rates to throttle inflation, but risks fostering a sharp pullback in economic activity as it boosts borrowing costs.

While the Fed is hopeful it can engineer a so-called "soft landing," where inflation comes down without a recession, Summers is skeptical.

"When inflation has been high and unemployment has been low, soft landings represent a kind of triumph of hope over experience," he said.

The final word: One definition of a recession is when the economy experiences two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product. In the first three months of the year, output declined at an annual rate of 1.6%. That raises the stakes for Thursday's first look at GDP data for the second quarter.

The recession call that economists and policymakers watch for, however, comes from the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee, which defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months."