Boston, Philadelphia & Wash DC Among Growth Areas
Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi reported on the future outlook and said there are regional pockets of strength developing: tech centers, areas where health care is strong like Boston, Raleigh, N.C., Orange County, Calif., Seattle, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.. Positive about the future Zandi said in a Stateline.org interview at the Pew Charitable trust offices,”For the near term, we’re clearly headed in the right direction. GDP (gross domestic product) is growing, the job market is stabilizing. The best forecast is that a year from now, we’ll bring down the jobless rate. Another reason for optimism is we’re righting some of the wrongs. One of the wrongs is the high level of indebtedness of U.S. consumers. We’re working through that pretty quickly. Leverage (borrowing) is falling rapidly, in part, because people are defaulting and, in part, because other people aren’t borrowing at all or are repaying their debt. In the housing market, the excess homes we built, the inventory, is being worked off very rapidly. Demand is weak, but supply is even weaker. Last, I think we are using the recession as an opportunity to make more fundamental changes in our financial system and the health care system. We may not all be happy with how it turns out, but we’ll have a better system because of it. So there’s reason to be optimistic in the long run.”
