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US GDP Forecast for 2009 Cut – British Economist

Business Materials 9 April 2008 17:12 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, 9 April / Trend corr A. Badalova/ US GDP will grow by 1.5% in 2009, while in 2008 it will grow by 0.5%, Julian Jessop, the senior international economist of the Capital Economics Ltd, one of the leading independent macro economic research consultancies in the world, said.

"We continue to expect US GDP to grow by just 0.5% this year, and have cut our 2009 forecast from 2.0% to 1.5%,"Jessop said to Trend on 9 April.

According to Jessop, even if the latest jobs data are not bad enough to send an unambiguous recession signal, the downward trend is clear.

Speaking at the US Congress's Economic Committee last week, the head of the Federal Reserve System Ben Bernanke for the first time admitted the possibility of recession. He said that the US GDP will be growing very slowly in the first quarter of the year and may even drop.

On 8 April, the Federal Reserve System publicized the protocol of Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMS) meeting which took place on 18 March. FOMC decided to cut the federal fund rate by 75 basic points to 2.25%.

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