Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan predicts the U.S. economy will avoid a recession.

“The debate is whether GDP [gross domestic product] growth flattens out at 2% or goes lower,” Moynihan said in a recent interview with Barron’s. “Everything we see in our customer base is consistent with a slowdown to 2% and a flattening out from there,” he said.

The economy grew at a 3.1% pace in the first quarter. Growth is cooling as the massive stimulus from last year’s tax cuts and spending increases fades.

To be sure, the U.S. economy is expanding at a 2.0% annualized rate in the second quarter based on data that showed a 0.9% drop in domestic housing starts in May, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow forecast model showed last week. This was a tad slower than the 2.1% pace estimated by the Atlanta Fed’s GDP program on June 14.

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2019 is 2.0 percent on June 18, down from 2.1 percent on June 14. After Tuesday morning's new residential construction release from the U.S. Census Bureau, the nowcast of second-quarter real residential investment growth inched down from 0.4 percent to 0.3 percent.

For his part, Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive officer of DoubleLine Capital, said earlier this month that the odds of the United States sliding into a recession in the next six months have risen to 40-45% and the odds were 65% within the next year.

Gundlach, who oversees more than $130 billion in assets under management, said the yield curve and the New York Fed recession probability showed a rising chance of recession.

“Several indicators suggest a recession could take place in one year,” Gundlach said on an investor website, adding consumer indicators point to “the front edge of a recession.”

Earlier this year, he said a recession was not on the horizon, but the U.S.-China trade war and the weak momentum of the global economy have raised red flags for him.

Material from Bloomberg and Reuters has been used in this report.

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