Part II

‘Leveling Out’
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his Federal Open Market Committee colleagues two days ago said the economy is “leveling out.” The central bank has pumped about $1 trillion into the banking system in a campaign to end the crisis, triggered by mortgage defaults, that has caused more than $1.6 trillion in losses and writedowns among financial firms worldwide.

President Barack Obama last week said: “We are pointed in the right direction,” in remarks at the White House. “We’ve rescued our economy from catastrophe.” The administration anticipates a gathering impact from its $787 billion fiscal stimulus into next year.

Some companies are also seeing signs of a turn in the economy. Karen Hoguet, chief financial officer at Macy’s Inc., the second-biggest U.S. department store chain, said on a conference call Aug. 12 that the Cincinnati-based company is “cautiously optimistic” its sales trends will improve.

A rebound in equities in recent months will help repair households’ balance sheets and buttresses the outlook for spending, said Glassman at JPMorgan. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index has climbed about 50 percent from its low in March. U.S. stock-market capitalization has increased by almost $4 trillion in that time.

Economists’ Forecasts
Economists this month lifted their projection for third- quarter growth by 1.2 percentage points to 2.2 percent compared with July, according to the median of 55 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. That is the biggest such boost in surveys dating from May 2003. Forecasts for 2010 were raised to 2.3 percent from 2.1 percent.

Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse Group AG in New York, played down concern that the economy may suffer a “double dip” recession. “Historically these double dips are routinely forecast and actually very rarely come to pass,” Soss said in a Bloomberg TV interview this week. “Once the economy tends to get some upward momentum, it tends to keep going that way.”