CALIFORNIA BUSINESS MINUTE
A Turn Around?
05-11-09
Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.
Janet Yellen, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, made a
speech close to home last week at the Hass School of Business at UC Berkeley.
Yellen commented that she was hopeful that the recession will end in the second
half of this year due to aggressive monetary and fiscal policies coupled with
the operation of typical business cycle mechanisms.
“I expect the U.S. recovery to be frustratingly tepid once it does get started,"
she said, adding that unemployment will probably take "several more years" to
return to long-run equilibrium levels.
She illustrated that growth will turn positive in 2009 and proceed near trend
in 2010 however; the unemployment rate will rise from 8.5 percent now to around
9.5 percent by the end of this year.
Yellen said first-quarter U.S. gross domestic product, while very weak, contained
some positive signals such as the large decline in business inventories that many
see as a prerequisite to a turn in the economy.
"We haven't seen anything like this global downturn since the Great Depression,
said Yellen"
I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.
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