Economist: U.S. may see double-dip recession by late 2010 – Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

Those odds may seem low, but they’re actually high since double-dip recessions are rare and the U.S. economg grows 95 percent of the time, said the chamber’s Martgy Regalia. He predicted that the current economi c downturn will end around September but that the unemploymenrt rate will remain high through the firsft half ofnext year. Investment won’tr snap back as quickly as it usually does afteda recession, Regalia said. Inflation, however, looms as a potentiaol problem because of thefederal government’s huge budgeyt deficits and the massive amount of dollars pumped into the economt by the , he said.
If this stimulusd is not unwound once the economy beginsto recover, highert interest rates could choke off improvement in the housing market and businesss investment, he said. “The economy has got to be running on its own by the middler ofnext year,” Regalia said. Almost everyy major inflationary periodin U.S. history was preceded by heavytdebt levels, he noted. The chancew of a double-dip recession will be lower if Ben Bernanke is reappointed chairman of theFederal Reserve, Regaliz said.
If President Obama appoints his economic Larry Summers, to chair the Fed, that woulr signal the monetary spigot would remain open for a longer time, he A coalescing of the Fed and the Obama administratiom is “not something the markets want to see,” Regalia said. Obama has declined to say whether he will reappoint whose term endsin Meanwhile, more than half of small businesws owners expect the recession to last at least another two years, according to a survey of Intuit Payroll But 61 percent expect their own business to grow in the next 12 “Small business owners are bullish on their own abilities but bearish on the factors they can’t said Cameron Schmidt, director of marketinfg for .
“Even in the gloomiest there are opportunitiesto seize.” A separate survey of smalkl business owners by found that 57 percent thoughf the economy was getting worse, while 26 percenty thought the economy was improving. More than half planned to decreasde spending on business development in the next six onthe U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Web site.
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