Compared with your current chart where it says $466,2bn:
Sept 2008 shows as
$738.6bn (snapshot from waybackmachine),
in 2007, the erliest snapshot on the waybackmachine and only 1 year earlier, it was at $862.3bn.
When Trump took office it was at
$469.4bn.
So your statement "Unfortunately, the CAB is >>getting deeper<< to the point where the increasing negative balance cannot be arrested (i.e. the rate of change in the CAB is getting worse)" is not factual.
However, if you WANT to be alarmed, there is a reason for that, too. A prediction tool for recession is the inverted yield curve: from the day that longterm interest rates, 10 years, fall below short term interest rates (3 months), it takes 6 to 18 months for the US to develop a recession.
The Fed Bank monitors and updates this same PDF monthly. So you can bookmark it for future, current reference.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibr...s/Prob_Rec.pdf
Top chart shows the past recession as grey bars.
Here's the daily current view
https://ycharts.com/indicators/10_ye...reasury_spread
Recession in 2020 is likely. Just when the Trumpist regime will hand over to the Dems (probably) and they get to clean up the Rep's mess, >again<. Dems are telling this narrative: that it was always a Rep's administration causing the recession, and the Dems inheriting it to clean it up. That cycle left the false impression in voters' minds that Dems have no fiscal/economic competence since it's always under a Dem administration that the people suffer from a recession.
