Fannie Mae forecasts a stronger U.S. economy in 2021

Today’s HousingWire Daily features an exclusive interview with Mark Palim, the deputy chief economist at Fannie Mae. In this episode, Palim explains why he believes the U.S. economy is poised for a considerably stronger year in 2021.

Here is a small preview of today’s interview with Palim. The transcript below has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

HousingWire: According to a recent Fannie Mae release, growth expectations for the U.S. economy in 2021 have now been upgraded for the second consecutive month due to positive developments associated with the Coronavirus pandemic. Can you touch on what these developments are and what they mean for the economy?

Mark Palim: Absolutely, as we’ve been working on the forecast for the last two months, one of the things that we’ve been tracking closely is what’s happening to consumer spending across different states, as we’ve seen a rise in COVID cases across the country, starting in the upper Midwest. And what we’ve seen is that consumer spending has actually held up far better this Fall than it did in the Spring. We are seeing consumers behave as they did in July and August when the first wave hit in some of the southern states. So, that led us to upgrade our growth expectations for the second half of 2021. As your question implied, another aspect of this was obviously the approval of a COVID vaccine and what public health officials are telling us about the timeline of when it will be deployed to a large number of households.

HousingWire Daily examines the most compelling articles reported from the HousingWire newsroom. Each afternoon, we provide our listeners with a deeper look into the stories coming across our newsroom that are helping Move Markets Forward. Hosted by the HW team and produced by Alcynna Lloyd and Victoria Wickham.