Most Americans Fear Recession in the Next 12 Months

slightly different view than wall street, fed, cnbc......

leichte diskrepanz zwischen den normalen leuten und wall street, fed, den medien....

Most Americans expect a recession within a year and disapprove of President George W. Bush's handling of the economy even though the unemployment rate is at a five-year low, a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found.

Six in 10 who were surveyed predicted a recession, similar to the 64 percent who anticipated the economy would contract in a December 2000 poll by the Los Angeles Times three months before the last decline. In the current survey, 71 percent of those earning less than $40,000 said they expect a recession compared with about half for those making more than $100,000. .....

.... Nonetheless, 57 percent said the economy is doing well. That was down 11 points from January.

Sixty-four percent of those polled said their own finances are very or fairly secure compared with 35 percent who described them as shaky.

Pessimism
``People tend to be pretty optimistic about their own situation, but when it comes to the larger economy they're much more pessimistic,'' said Karlyn Bowman, a polling expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. ``The public's just in a very sour mood because Iraq continues to cast a pall over everything.''

Americans are split on Bush's call to make permanent the $2 trillion in tax cuts he has pushed through Congress. About four in 10 favor extending the cuts when they expire in 2010, slightly more than those who oppose that idea. ....

In short, the current recovery looks weak on all measures except profit growth. As a policy lesson, the large tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which have hadample time to affect the economy by now, have failed to deliver economicperformance that even matches up to the past average.

http://tinyurl.com/3x4ajg

Almost three in five said the Federal Reserve should hold interest rates steady, twice the number who said the Fed should cut rates to stimulate the economy. Only 6 percent called on the Fed to raise rates to stymie inflation.

The poll also asked who is mostly to blame for the wave of defaults among so-called subprime mortgages that are extended to borrowers with poor or limited credit history. Due to rising interest rates, the adjustable-rate mortgages threaten many homeowners with foreclosure. Fewer than three in 10 respondents said borrowers were mostly to blame and almost four in 10 blamed the lenders.

Government Intervention
One in five surveyed blamed government regulators for the subprime crisis. Half of those polled said the government should intervene to assist low-income borrowers facing foreclosure. Among those who earn $100,000 or more, 36 percent called for the government to take action and 63 percent of those earning less than $40,000 favored government action.

The poll of 1,373 adults was taken April 5-9 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Most Americans remain sanguine about home prices, the poll showed, with more than half expecting homes in their neighborhood to hold their value over the next six months. Twice as many respondents said home prices will increase as those who predicted a decline. A majority said slowing home sales nationwide will hurt the economy.