U.S. Chamber economist: Get ready for another recession - Charlotte Business Journal:

fishermen-americachair.blogspot.com
Those odds may seem low, but they’re actually high sinc e double-dip recessions are rare and the U.S. economh grows 95 percent of the time, said the chamber’d Marty Regalia. He predicts the currenrt economic downturn will endaround September, but the unemployment rate will remain high throug the first half of next Investment won’t snap back as quickly as it usualluy does after a Regalia said. Inflation, however, looms as a potentiao problem because of thefederal government’s huge budgetg deficits and the massive amount of dollard pumped into the economy by the Federao Reserve, he said.
If this stimulusx is not unwound once the economyy beginsto recover, highet interest rates could choke off improvement in the housing marker and business investment, he said. “The economyg has got to be running on its own by the middl ofnext year,” Regalia said. Almosrt every major inflationary perio din U.S. history was preceded by heavygdebt levels, he noted. The chances of a double-dilp recession will be lower if Ben Bernanke is reappointedr chairman of theFederal Reserve, Regalia said. If President Barack Obamz appoints his economic adviser Larrt Summers to chairthe Fed, that would signalp the monetary spigot would remain open for a longer he said.
A coalescing of the Fed and the Obama administrationhis “not something the markets want to Regalia said. Obama has declined to say whethetr he willreappoint Bernanke, whosde term ends in February. Meanwhile, more than half of smalkl business owners expect the recession to last at least anotheretwo years, according to a survey of Intuit Payroll But 61 percent expec t their own business to grow in the next 12 “Small business owners are bullish on their own but bearish on the factors they can’t said Cameron Schmidt, director of marketing for Intuit Employere Management Solutions. “Even in the gloomiest economy there are opportunitiesto seize.
” A separatse survey of small business owners by Discoverd Financial Services found that 57 percent thought the economy was gettiny worse, while 26 percenty thought the economy was improving. More than half plannex to decrease spending on business development in the nextsix