“Once we cross zero [growth], it’s going to flatten out a bit and still be upward sloping,” he says. “It’s not going to be stagnation, but I think the hangover of the financial crisis and the continuing need to rebuild the financial sector is going to restrain growth.”
Levenson says he expects a gradual recovery, with perhaps a 1 percent increase in the third quarter of this year and maybe 1.5 percent in the last quarter. “This has been a deep recession, and history suggests that after deep recessions, we get strong recoveries,” he says.
Brian Wesbury, the chief economist at Chicago-based First Trust Advisors, is more optimistic that a recovery will be the classic, sharp bounce-back from a deep recession.
“We’re going to see an increase in the third quarter probably closer to 3 percent to 3.5 percent than the 1 percent to 1.5 percent that is conventional wisdom,” Wesbury says.