So I'm not all that familiar with this particular passage, but what's being described is pretty clearly a debt crisis, a circumstance that I'd be very hesitant to describe as a general "recession" (although I mean economists can feel free to disagree). Debt crises were a known problem in the Roman world, because of the way both debt and the economy worked. Credit was an integral part of not only the Roman economy, but also played an important role in Roman society, particularly Republican society. Republican nobiles and political hopefuls, despite their enormous wealth, ran up equally enormous debts. It's not too hard to see why, both economically and socially. Public life--and the public and private lives of the senatorial class were inextricably linked--was extraordinarily expensive. The Roman senatorial class was competitive to a degree that has hardly been rivaled since. They competed with each other in the magnificence of their houses and property, which increased steadily in cost over time, in their ostentatious displays of wealth to the people and their friends, the lavishness of their banquets, and so forth, all in the interests of displaying their public generosity and preeminence over their rivals. In a more strictly political sense, both election and magistracy were expensive. Even without resorting to bribery an honest politician was expected to be free with his resources, in order to get his name out and show that he was a generous individual. And magistracy was unpaid--indeed, the resources allotted to magistrates publicly were often insufficient and a magistrate was tacitly expected to supplement state funds with his own resources. On the other side, although senators were fabulously wealthy, their wealth was tied closely to land. Senators were barred from direct entry into commerce, and though they could engage indirectly through slaves and dependents popularis laws in particular such as the lex Claudia of 218 (which imposed stricter limits on the trade ships senators could own) increasingly shut down these avenues of trade. As a result, they borrowed, both from each other and from moneylenders. Often these moneylenders were equites, lest we leave out these plebeian, non-senatorial economic magnates. The equites themselves, though not limited by such strictures, likewise could run up debts from investing borrowed money into various enterprises, or trading in futures and other speculative economic activity--the grain trade, dominated by equestrian traders, was well-known for its speculative and highly-manipulated market, which led to massive increases in prices even in times of plenty and was an economic nightmare (leading, often, to mass, artificially created famine) before Augustus. The highest echelons of Roman economic activity was dominated by debt. Often this was more or less unofficial, in the form of tacit recognition of favors owed (always a valuable form of Republican socio-economic currency) and IOUs exchanged between individuals, which could be traded and even assumed (e.g. Catulus' failed attempt to assume and pay off Caesar's aedilician debts in order to force him to drop out of the race for the pontifex maximus in 63).

At the same time the poor ran up debts. Debt probably affected the urban plebs, primarily day-laborers likely paying their rents often on a daily basis (and therefore semi-homeless), comparatively little (though the suggestion of short-term loans for skilled tradesmen and rent-payers has been raised, with little evidence), but it was an accepted part of the lives of rural inhabitants. Rome was a pre-industrial society, and like all pre-industrial societies its economy revolved almost entirely around agriculture. The majority of the free population was involved in agricultural work (even more no doubt if we include those urban day-workers who sought seasonal work in the suburban fields), working on small plots, rented or owned. In a pre-Green Revolution society the threat of a bad harvest was a serious one. For the urban plebs it meant famine and an increase in the price of grain, already barely affordable in times of economic plenty. For the rural plebs it meant their total economic ruin, as their farms dried up and they became unable to pay their rents or feed themselves. In fact, I think if anything in the Roman economy can be called a "recession" it's bad agricultural seasons, which affected every conceivable part of the Roman world in a way that's simply not true in most parts of the world now. Furthermore, farmers might just be stuck on shitty property. Many farmers, particularly in the first century, were settled veterans, and their plots were distributed out of convenience, and not necessarily with an eye towards prosperity. Thus the Sullan veterans were said to have largely abandoned their plots. Writers like Sallust attribute it to their laziness, but agricultural work was hard (although most soldiers, despite the popular perception of the so-called "Marian reforms," were always rural citizens, except in times of great crisis like during Marius' first consulship) and unpredictable. A bad plot or a bad harvest could ruin a small farmer, and people like the Sullans in particular, whose titles were mostly gotten under suspicious circumstances (proscriptions, etc.) couldn't even rely on selling their land. Therefore, they borrowed. And what might start with a single season of borrowing to make up for drought could turn into a lifetime of crippling debt, if a farmer's luck failed to turn around. Thus the Catilinarians and their debt relief (tabulae novae) saw the greatest success in rural Italy, while the urban plebs, despite Cicero's fear, conspicuously failed to support them.

It's not too hard to see why debt would be a problem, both for these reasons and because of the way currency in a pre-modern world worked. Today we deal in print money and digital transactions, but when the Roman minted distributed coin they had to get that metal somewhere and it cost something. Moreover, coin was not just lying around all over the place. The senatorial class' wealth was to be found in their land, which could not be easily liquidated. Likewise for small farmers, whose means were considerably less of course. And though the equites as a whole invested in all kinds of enterprises the physical limitations of keeping stashes of millions of HS (and the impact hoarding such coin would have on the economy) made it unrealistic even for them to keep titanic private sums around. When Cicero bought his Palatine house, his pride and joy, for three and a half million HS he jokingly remarked to P. Sestius in a letter ut cupiam coniurare, si quisquam recipiat, "that I would like to enter a conspiracy, if one would take me." Cicero traded in property throughout Italy, making a pretty penny buying and selling to his friends (though he was never considered fabulously wealthy) but despite all this his constant need for immediate funds is quite obvious in his letters, and likely helped strain his relationship with his wife Terentia, who had ample private resources of her own from which Cicero borrowed constantly. Eventually they became divorced.

One further problem that should be mentioned is the way that Republican law treated debt. By the Principate more rational measures had been set in place, but Republican law was harsh towards debtors. Though lenient compared to most Greek debt laws (which were often horrifically Draconian), Republican law essentially placed the debtor totally at the mercy of his creditor. Debt slavery had been abolished by most of the historical period, but less strict agreements (addictio) could still place the debtor under his creditor's command (which nobody actually wanted: debtors for obvious reasons, but creditors much preferred getting cash they could use than a temporary slave whose economic value was harder to establish). At the very least a debtor might find himself served with proscriptio bonorum, confiscation of his property. C. Antonius, Cicero's consular colleague, had suffered this ruling in 70. And defaulting on debt incurred infamia, which status then barred the individual from magistracy, senatorial status, and even representation in the law courts. As a result, debtors were naturally very hesitant to make their debt known--the result of debt was so severe that it was better to borrow more to pay off your existing creditors than risk bankruptcy. Nor were these provisions especially great for creditors, who wanted their money, not the destruction of their debtors.

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http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Annals/6A*.html - A link to an online English version of the text mentioned above.