In an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday, Donald Trump predicted a "very massive recession" was coming, adding that "it's a terrible time right now" to invest in the stock market.
It's not the first time Trump has offered up his economic forecast. In the years before his current run for president, the billionaire businessman and reality TV star has frequently cast himself as an expert on the economy, while providing analysis that often turned out to be wildly incorrect.
During this time, Trump at various points predicted imminent economic collapse, even going so far to suggest in 2011 that the price of bread would soon rise to $25. But his optimistic predictions have been wrong, too, such as when he argued in 2005 and 2006, just before the housing crisis, that the real estate market would continue to be strong.
Here's a rundown of Trump's suspect economic analysis:
1. Trump said in 1991, at the beginning of what is known in Japan as the Lost Decade, that the Japanese economic model was "totally brilliant."
"You look at Japan, the way the've managed their economy, it's totally brilliant," Trump said on Joan Rivers' talk show. "What they've done is totally brilliant."
2. In his 1999 book The America We Deserve, written while he explored a run for president, Trump predicted "an economic crash like we've never seen before".
"The first storm— economic disaster: I hope I'm wrong, but I think we may be facing an economic crash like we've never seen before— probably sooner rather than later. The next president, or maybe the one we've got, could be in office for a stock market crash worse than the one in 1929. I'm not saying this crash will ruin us, but we have to anticipate it and know how to rebound. We'd better be ready, as a nation, to claw our way back up. Right now I'm not seeing the leadership we're going to need."
3. By 2001, however, just before the U.S. was hit by a recession, Trump was backtracking on this dire prediction, telling Chris Matthews he thought economic troubles would be confined to stocks and would not hit the real estate market.
"Well, it seems to be a stock market recession," Trump said that April. "It doesn't seem, Chris, to be anything else. I mean, the real estate market in New York has probably never been stronger. It may not be quite as good as it was last year, but it's very, very strong, and very good, and it looks like it's getting better. So it seems to be--I know a lot of friends of mine are just wiped out in the stock market, but real estate's been very good."
He later added that he didn't "see a recession."
"Well, they don't invest that much in dot-com stocks so they're not for that," Trump said of his personal associates. "They like General Electric. They like the--the real stocks. And I think that they're not worried. I think that they're making a lot of money and we're building a lot of buildings in the city. A lot of--a lot of construction's going on in New York, and it's filling up as fast as we can build it. So I don't see recession. It could happen, but I don't see it. Certainly it--there isn't right now in New York City."
4. Writing in 2005 on his Trump University blog, Trump advised readers not to worry about the housing bubble bursting.
"With housing prices continuing to rise into the far reaches of the stratosphere, there's a lot of talk about a housing bubble on the brink of bursting. Scared at the possibility, industry watchers have been preaching impending doom, warning house shoppers to be wary of the real estate market," Trump wrote in a post titled "The Housing Bubble: Doom and Gloom Don't Pay."
"As long as interest rates stay low and the dollar stays weak—which is an unfortunate situation, but it happens to be good for real estate—then there will be no burst in the current housing bubble. If interest rates go up precipitously and the dollar gets stronger, then there will be some reduction in housing prices."
5. In 2006, Trump launched Trump Mortgage, saying "the real estate market is going to be very strong for a long time to come."
"I think it's a great time to start a mortgage company," he told CNBC in 2006. "The real estate market is going to be very strong for a long time to come."
The housing market crashed in 2007 and Trump Mortgage went out of business.
6. Under Barack Obama's administration, Trump's predictions turned grim again. In 2011, he said that the price of a loaf of bread would soon soar to $25.
"If oil prices are allowed to inflate and keep inflating, if the dollar keeps going down in value — which is not is not good because you're going to pay $25 for a loaf of bread pretty soon," he told NewsMaxTV. "If you look at what's happening with our food prices, they're going through the roof. We could end up being another Egypt."
"You could have riots in our streets also," Trump went on to add. "So, if he thinks things are going to get worse by the way he phrased that, or by the you phrase, I think there's a very distinct possibility that things could get worse yes."
7. In 2012, Trump previewed some of the arguments he makes today, saying that the real unemployment rate is much higher than advertised and that a recession is coming or even already here.
The U-6 real unemployment rate is even scarier than the national unemployment rate. @BarackObama is overseeing a Depression.
Today's job report is not a good sign & we could be facing another recession. No real job growth. We need over 300K new jobs a month.