Paul Murray's weblog, with news you may have missed and my $0.02 worth on a number of topics.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald

I bet you don't have a friend who's an acupuncturist

E-mail me: pmurray [at] despammed.com

From their lips to -- well, some people's ears. Last Wednesday I was saying good riddance to 2008, due in part to the atrocious economy, and hoping (but doubting) that things will get better in 2009. Now I read that some people think that might happen sooner than you might expect (albeit with a big "if"):

In the midst of the deepest recession in the experience of most Americans, many professional forecasters are optimistically heading into the new year declaring that the worst may soon be over.

For this rosy picture to play out, they are counting on the Obama administration and Congress to come through with a substantial stimulus package, at least $675 billion over two years.

They say that will get the economy moving again in the face of persistently weak spending by consumers and businesses, not to mention banks that are reluctant to extend credit.

If the dominoes fall the right way, the economy should bottom out and start growing again in small steps by July, according to the December survey of 50 professional forecasters by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Investors seemed to be in a similarly optimistic mood on Friday, bidding up stocks by about 3 percent.

But in the absence of that government stimulus, the grim economic headlines of 2008 will probably continue for some time, these forecasters acknowledge.

Before you get too excited, the article goes on to point out how these same forecasters didn't foresee how bad things were going to get. And there's a strain of "neo-Hooverites" in the Republican Party who argue that government should be slashing spending to balance budgets, instead of spending more to help the economy recover. (This is the exact opposite of what most economists would recommend.) So don't spend that emergency fund yet.

Labels: economy

posted by Paul Murray at 1:21 AM | permanent link |