Economist: U.S. may see double-dip recession by late 2010 - Charlotte Business Journal:

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Those odds may seem low, but they’re actually high since double-dipl recessions are rare and the U.S. economy growd 95 percent of the time, said the chamber’se Marty Regalia. He predictef that the current economic downturn will end aroundd September but that the unemployment rate will remaih high through the first half ofnext year. Investmeng won’t snap back as quickly as it usuallu does aftera recession, Regalia said. Inflation, looms as a potential problem becauses of thefederal government’s huge budget deficits and the massive amoung of dollars pumped into the economyh by the , he said.
If this stimulus is not unwound once the economty beginsto recover, higher interesty rates could choke off improvementr in the housing market and businesxs investment, he said. “The economy has got to be runninb on its own by the middle ofnext year,” Regaliaq said. Almost every major inflationary perioedin U.S. history was preceded by heavuydebt levels, he noted. The chances of a double-dip recessionh will be lower if Ben Bernanke is reappointesd chairman of theFederal Reserve, Regalia If President Obama appointds his economic adviser, Larry Summers, to chairt the Fed, that would signa the monetary spigot would remaimn open for a longer time, he said.
A coalescingb of the Fed and the Obams administrationis “not something the marketse want to see,” Regalia said. Obama has declined to say whether he willreappoiny Bernanke, whose term ends in February. more than half of small business owners expect the recession to last at least another two according to a survey of IntuitrPayroll customers. But 61 percent expect their own businessz to grow in the next12 months. “Small businesz owners are bullish on their own abilitiew but bearish on the factorsthey can’t control,” said Cameron Schmidt, director of marketing for . “Evem in the gloomiest economy, there are opportunitiee to seize.
” A separate survey of small business owners by found that 57 percent thought the econom y wasgetting worse, while 26 percent thought the econom was improving. More than half planned to decrease spending on business development in the next six onthe U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Web