Is America Bound for Recession?
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The odds have grown that the economy will slip into a recession. At the beginning of last year, many economists put that chance at less than 1-in-3; now an increasing number says it has climbed to around 50-50
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The best of times, or the worst of times. The US economy is the strongest in years, or is mired in the deepest employment crisis in decades.
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(InfoWorld) - Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan is hitting the airwaves promoting his new book, but his comments in recent interviews about the possibility of a recession might be scarier to IT folks than anything in the new tome. Greenspan, who has become a Federal Reserve chairman emeritus of sorts, might be more objective now that he is out of his federal role. He told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that he thought the probability of a recession is "slightly more than a third," up from merely a third, as he put it earlier this year. For IT professionals and CEOs of major software and hardware vendors, the prospect of a recession any time soon is downright daunting, given that memories of the 2001-2002 dot-com bust are still fresh. If housing price declines and the troubles with home mortgage lenders precipitate a longer economic downturn in the next year, the effect could roughly halve the 12-year cycle many economists track for upturns and downturns, some observers noted yesterday. "I'm certainly concerned with the housing downturn," said IT market analyst Jason Sajko, who studies government spending on IT for consulting firm Input. "But I don't see that creating something like what we felt in 2001 and 2002 so soon after then. I don't think we'll see an impact of that magnitude." Sajko and Input do frequent analysis of federal, state, and local spending on IT products and services. A month ago, Input said it was still projecting strong growth in state and local government spending in the United States on IT products and services into 2012, increasing from $43.9 billion in 2007 to $67.2 billion in 2012. That analysis was able to track the impact of the general economy, including the news in the last six months over housing market problems. In a small update to that analysis yesterday, Sajko said that state and local governments are also beginning to use a new catalog of IT vendors and prices called Schedule 70 provided by the U.S. General Services Administration. The GSA provides the catalog as a resource to thousands of state and local IT purchasing managers, Sajko explained. For Schedule 70, growth in IT spending among local and state governments will increase nearly 25 percent a year to 2012, exceeding $1 billion. While $1 billion is a small portion of the total spending in that category, it shows primarily a shift in the way spending will be done, not so much the overall level of spending related to the larger IT economy, Sajko said. Still, state and local spending on IT can be seen as a "more stable" area for IT spending in coming years than others, Sajko said. Several CEOs in recent days have said in interviews with Computerworld that they are carefully watching the direction of the general economy. They said they learned from the dot-com bust to adapt their products to the most successful market segments in order to weather downturns. For example, Maria Ligeti, CEO of startup React Systems in Roseville, Calif., said yesterday she has profited from observing the IT industry's upturns and downturns in Silicon Valley for more than 20 years while working in various roles. A new product and service her company is launching soon in emergency communications will be marketed to several vertical industry segments. She said the offerings have been fostered over several months by early adopters, she said. "We think we'll be somewhat immune" if there's a downturn, she said with confidence.
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Both employment statistics and the bond market are indicating that the U.S. could be heading toward recession.
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Continued robust expansion in developing countries will help offset a slowdown in the United States this year amid concerns of a possible recession in the world's largest economy
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Problems in the U.S. subprime mortgage market are unlikely to push the U.S. economy into a recession over the next 12 months, the top economist for a leading U.S. business group said on Tuesday.
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Business & money: US will bear brunt of slowdown in economic growth, global stability report says.
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The US has seen the first decline in employment since August 2003, in a fresh sign that a recession is looming.
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Fresh signs emerged Tuesday that the U.S. economic slowdown may be intensifying, increasing the odds of a recession:
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Once everyone agrees that a recession is here, it?s time to start buying stocks again.
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Americans are worried about the economy and fear housing woes and war spending could spark a recession, despite the interest rate cut this week that sent stock markets soaring.
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Pressure is mounting for the US government to act soon to prevent a recession.
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IF the US Federal Reserve is raising interest rates yet again, then the US economy can&#39;t be on the verge of falling back into recession after all, right?
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Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein discusses whether the economy is entering a recession.
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Plunging housing prices and soaring oil costs have provoked gloomy talk of a possible recession. Yet the economy has kept growing. How much longer can the expansion carry on? How much longer can the expansion carry on?
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The Motley Fool - We're heading into a recession. You've heard about it for months, even years, what with the housing bubble, the war in Iraq, overextended consumer credit -- you name it. A recent Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER - News) report says that the U.S. economy will grow by only 1.9% next year, down from 3.4% this year, and slower than the global growth rate of 5.2%. Even slowpoke Europe should pass us at 2.1%, though the U.S. is ahead of the average European GDP growth rate of 2.7%.
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The odds of a U.S. recession stand at nearly 50 percent amid a spate of data showing a weakening labor market, signs of more credit tightening and turmoil in the financial markets, the latest Blue Chip Economic forecast is projecting.