"Economists Expect Strong Growth For 1999 But Are Mixed on 2000"

http://dowjones.wsj.com/n/SB930914120372794226-d-main-c1.html

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 07, 1999

Answers

From the above article...

[snip]

In front of the negative-growth camp is Edward Yardeni, chief economist for the U.S. operations of Deutsche Bank. Mr. Yardeni is well-known for his belief that the Y2K problem could wreak havoc on the nation's economy and possibly even prompt a world-wide recession. His forecast calls for the U.S. economy to contract at an annual rate of 7% in the first quarter of 2000. He worries that the just-in-time inventory system that is widely used around the world will experience major disruptions, especially in emerging countries. "Most economists believe [theY2K problem] will be a non-event because they think contingency planning will cushion the effect and that the problems will be rapidly accessed and fixed. I just don't buy into that," said Mr. Yardeni.

[snip]

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 07, 1999.

[snip #2]

But when it comes to forecasting growth in the first quarter of next year, the economists are sharply divided. That's mainly because their views differ on the potential impact of the year-2000 computer problem. Overall, the economists expect that the feared glitch will actually add about 0.4 percentage point to growth in the second half of this year, then cut nearly 0.7 point off growth in the first half of next year. As a result, the economists are forecasting growth of just 1.5% for the first quarter of 2000.

But of the 54 economists in the survey, 22 said they don't believe growth will be affected at all by the year-2000 worries this year and 15 said they don't believe growth will affected next year.

-- Jeff Donohue (Jeff_Donohue@hotmail.com), July 07, 1999.

Interestingly, there is a typo on the web version of the document not present in the print version. You can see it from the text I snipped.

Perhaps the lesson is that not everything on the web is all that accurate, eh?

-- Jeff Donohue (Jeff_Donohue@hotmail.com), July 07, 1999.

In case you don't care to read for typos, the error was in the last sentence: "...15 said they don't believe growth will [be] affected next year."

-- Jeff Donohue (Jeff_Donohue@hotmail.com), July 07, 1999.

Just wondering how many here agree with Mr. Yardeni's economic prognostications.

His recession scenarios would have to be considered pretty much middle of the road on this forum, no? Certainly not the stuff of bug outs, martial law and societal collapse.

Just wondering . . .

-- David (David@BankPacman.com), July 07, 1999.