It is going to get worse for a while before it gets better. Decades of poor economic policy is going to die a long, hard death and any turn around won't happen until 2010, at the earliest.
The U.S. economy is expected to shrink 0.4% in 2009 compared with 2008, according to the monthly survey of 49 economists published Monday by Blue Chip Economic Indicators.
The economists also expect contractions in the Japanese, British and euro-zone economies in 2009.
The economists' median forecast calls for U.S. gross domestic product to fall by 2.8% in the final three months of 2008 and by 1.5% in the first quarter of 2009. GDP growth of 0.2% is expected in the second quarter next year.
Measured from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2009, the Blue Chip forecasters expect GDP to rise 0.6%, compared with a forecast of 0.1% from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008.
"The consensus strongly suggests that the current recession will be deeper and last longer than those of 2001 and 1990-91," said Blue Chip editor Randell Moore in his commentary.
"Some of our panelists believe it may rival the 1981-1982 downturn, but that is not yet the consensus view," he added.
The nation's unemployment rate is expected to average 7.4% in 2009; it was 6.5% in October.
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