Sunday, April 27, 2008

UCSD Economics Roundtable - Peter Hooper speaks

Naked Capitalism:
by Peter Hooper April 26, 2008

The speaker at our UCSD Economics Roundtable this week was Peter Hooper, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities. Here is a brief summary of his thoughts about the U.S. economic outlook.

Hooper thinks the U.S. has likely already entered a recession and is expecting U.S. real GDP growth to come in slightly negative for the first two quarters of 2008. His forecast calls for a sharp but brief kick out in the third quarter, thanks to the tax rebate stimulus. He calculates that $100 billion in rebates might translate into $33 billion more spending on final goods and services in the third quarter, or $132 billion at an annual rate, though Robin Moroney and Joseph Carson seem less confident. After any consumption burst, Hooper's expecting the continuing drag from housing to bring us back to sluggish but positive growth numbers.


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