Monetary Policy

SIFMA: U.S. Recession To Continue Through Mid-2009 

Securities industry trade group SIFMA — we’d spell out their formal name, but its ridiculously long — said late Monday that it now expects gross domestic product to fall a full percentage point in 2009, as a sharp U.S. recession runs its course through the middle of next year. The group’s economic advisory round table suggested that rampant speculation, but a current lack of certainty, over what the incoming Obama administration will or will not do is “making attempts to forecast more challenging than at any time in recent memory.” Or at least, the past eight years.