Commerce Bank chief economist Scott Colbert says you can’t miss the signs of a slowing economy, but that doesn’t mean the nation’s second-longest recovery — and sure to become its longest — is backing its way into another recession, at least not anytime soon.

Colbert was in town May 6 along with Commerce Bank Chairman and CEO John Kemper for an economic update luncheon. This has become an annual event, dating back five years to when the Kansas City, Mo.-based financial institution established an office in Des Moines.

Colbert met this Business Record reporter for coffee after the event. You get the impression that even if he detected a recession lurking in the weeds of economic data he examines, he would deliver the news with a humorous metaphor.

As it is, he sees an economy that might be the in the middle of the fifth, maybe top of the sixth inning of a high-stakes baseball game. If you buy the thinking that we’re in the ninth inning of the recovery, the old ballgame is headed for extra innings, several of them.

“The 10-year economic recovery that we’re currently in has generated a lot wealth, a lot of job opportunity, a lot of income, and a lot of participation in the employment area surely but slowly over time, and it’s created a kind of self-compounding situation that really isn’t about to be snuffed out,” Colbert said. “We think it will last a lot longer than the average economist does.”

Colbert expects the current expansion to last “at least four more years,” whereas many economists are predicting a recession in the next year.

“We don’t see much reason to look over our shoulders, other than the fact that it has been the longest economic recovery,” he said. “If you go 10 years without being run over by a truck, you feel like the truck’s got to be coming.”

Sure, Colbert sees the signs of a lagging economy. He notes that housing probably has peaked, as have automobile sales. Our enviable unemployment rate is in part due to the fact that many folks who lost their jobs during the Great Recession have dropped out of the labor force and do not factor into the unemployment calculation.

Still, with the Federal Reserve apparently ready to back off of additional interest rate hikes, corporations spending some of their cash on capital investments, and financial markets with plenty of room for steady growth, Colbert says the recovery still has some pretty broad shoulders.

“The Federal Reserve is likely on perma-pause,” he said. “While we don’t expect to see rates go down like a lot of people do, we think that the Fed is basically done with rate hikes for the very, very considerable future. That’s why we are calling it the pause that refreshes or the perma-pause that refreshes.”