Nariman Behravesh
Nariman Behravesh
Nariman Behravesh is Chief Economist at the consulting firm IHS Inc. and author of Spin-Free Economics: A No-Nonsense, Nonpartisan Guide to Today's Global Economic Debates. Directing the entire economic forecasting process at IHS, he is responsible for developing the economic outlook and risk analysis for the United States, Europe, Japan, China and other emerging markets. He oversees the work of over 400 professionals, located in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa who cover economic, financial...
early headed interpret soft warning
We are headed for a Katrina-induced soft patch, but I would not interpret this as the early warning of a recession.
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The big uncertainty is how much of a hit the housing marketing will take. Is it going to be a hard landing or a soft landing? I worry about that much more than I worry about high fuel prices right now.
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The labor market is growing at a pretty good pace. We're clearly seeing a rebound in the economy from the soft spot we experienced in the fourth quarter, and I think we'll see payroll growth similar to last year.
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A lot will depend on how weak housing gets, in terms of whether we go into a real soft patch or not. That's the key here.
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The Fed seems to have engineered a soft landing.
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I think the way out of these deficits is that the U.S. currency will start to come down over the next two to three years.
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Record-high profits, combined with solid economic growth and rising capacity utilization will translate into robust capital spending - all good news for the industrial sectors of the economy.
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Record-high energy prices did not spill over into the rest of the economy.
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It is encouraging that core inflation in 2005 was no higher than the year before even though we had record oil prices. From that perspective, the Fed can feel confident that inflation won't get out of control.
feels
When it is up around 6%, it feels a lot worse.
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While inflation remains tame, inflationary pressures keep building. Thus, the Fed can't let its guard down.
environment
We are in a much more competitive environment than we were 20 years ago.
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We are just starting to see the impact of Katrina. We are going to see awful inflation numbers, awful employment numbers and awful industrial production numbers for a few months.
question year
There is no question that we are going out in this year with a lot of momentum.