Goldman’s Hatzius: The next US recession “is years away”

By Prieur du Plessis, on May 20th, 2011 posted in: Economy, US

The next recession in the U.S. “is years away”, the chief U.S. economist of Goldman Sachs said earlier this week. “There’s still a long way to go. The unemployment rate is still 9%, we’re nowhere close to a really tight labor market that usually predicates a recession, so I think we’re still be in a recovery for a few years,” Jan Hatzius told CNBC.

“The underlying trend is still above-trend growth. That’s not going to be true in every indicator, but the best evidence for that is probably the fact that the unemployment been trending down. That’s what ties into the monetary policy outlook also, and that’s one of the key reasons we think the [Federal Reserve is] going to stay pretty even” on interest rates, he said.

Source: CNBC, May 18, 2011.

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