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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: At_The_Ask who wrote (148845)	2/5/2002 1:01:58 PM
From: Secret_Agent_Man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

POG sneakin' up a bit 2-dae

To: At_The_Ask who wrote (148845)	2/5/2002 1:02:54 PM
From: robnhood	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 436258

<<<-- White House Sees Recovery, No Double-Dip Recession -- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday it sees a vigorous U.S. recovery taking hold this year fueled by consumer spending and revived business investment that will help the United States skirt a double-dip recession. Economists believe the United States slipped into recession last year, with the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington dealing a sharp blow to an economy that was already slowing dramatically. Despite expectations of a downturn in Japan and only very modest growth in the euro zone, Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), was upbeat as he presented the annual "Economic Report of the President." Saying excessive amounts of business investment in capital goods still needed to be worked off in some parts of the U.S. economy -- notably telecommunications -- Hubbard said he was optimistic such a "capital overhang" was drawing to an end. "Outside of a few sectors of the economy, the capital overhang is largely over and by the middle of the year a lot of the head winds, if you will, to investment spending will be removed," Hubbard said. "Consumer spending remains quite solid, and those two things together are the seeds of a quite vigorous recovery by later in the year," the economist said. While acknowledging that if consumer spending did not hold up there could be some downside risk to the economy, Hubbard said he was not expecting a double-dip recession. A recession is traditionally defined as two consecutive quarters in which an economy contracts. A double-dip recession would be one in which there are two quarters of contraction, a brief recovery, and then another two quarters of contraction. Relatively robust consumer spending helped to prop up the economy last year, producing a 0.2 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the fourth quarter that startled many on Wall Street who had been expecting the economy to contract. "It (a slowdown in consumer spending) is a key downside risk. But on average, looking at the balance of risks, I don't see a double-dip recession," Hubbard told reporters. Hubbard also said that he saw more upside than downside risk to the Bush administration's forecast of 0.7 percent year-on-year GDP growth for 2002. Hubbard said that the White House expects a near-term downturn in the Japanese economy but said the risks in Japan were unlikely to have much of an effect on the U.S. economy. "For the Japanese economy, there are real near-term concerns and I think those concerns are exacerbated by the slow pace of the resolution of nonperforming loans and (the) monetary policy issues in Japan, which make forecasting actually quite difficult," Hubbard said. "In the broadest terms, we are assuming only very modest growth in the euro zone and a downturn in the Japanese economy," the economist added. "There are very significant downside risks in the Japanese economy. Those downside risks frankly have only very modest effects on the United States through conventional trade mechanisms," he said. (C) Reuters 2001. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.