With the Iran crisis continuing to bubble, oil prices mounting another run at $70 a barrel, and renewed anxiety on Wall Street about corporate earnings, you might think that the odds were fading for another round of Fed-induced interest-rate hikes. But the members of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) think otherwise. The January NABE Industry Survey, released today, reflects expectations of “solid growth in the economy,” said Gene Huang, NABE member who in his day job is chief economist, FedEx Corporation, in a
press release.
Reviewing a copy of the entire survey obtained by CS reveals that the 142 NABE-member economists polled generally observe that industry demand for goods and services is rising. In fact, NABE’s net rising index–which measures the percent of respondents reporting rising demand minus the percent reporting falling demand– increased to 54 percent, the highest reading since the second quarter of 1997. No wonder then that the NABE survey finds that three out of five respondents predict inflation-adjusted gross domestic product will grow at an annual rate of three to four percent in the first half of 2006.
Source: NABE