According to the Wall Street Journal’s semi-annual forecasting survey, many economists now predict that the US economy will begin to show signs of recovery by the end of this year despite the current trend for corporate dolor.
In Q1 2001, the economy managed only 1.2% growth, the panel of forecasters consulted by the WSJ predict that this figure will rise to 2.7% by Q4 and by 3.1% during the first six months of 2002. Although these figures fall significantly short of predictions made in 1999 and 2000, they represent a significant turnaround of the current economic situation.
“We will gradually transition into faster growth,” says Richard Rippe, chief economist at Prudential Securities Inc. in New York. “Not everyone is going to see conditions restored to where they were in 1999 and early 2000, but business conditions will improve.”
Although this is a fairly optimistic view comparatively speaking, the fiscal movement within the US economy, driven by ‘aggressive’ interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and tax cuts by Congress, provides room for sanguinity.
