In 1980, the U.S. economy was in the midst of a severe recession and jobs were not easy to find. So Lou Crandall, after earning a bachelor's degree with emphasis in economics from Cornell University and resumed scattered everywhere. One went to an employment agency looking for bilingual workers. Crandall had spent five years of his childhood in Italy, where his father taught in an American school, and spoke in इतालियन.
As it happened, the head of the employment agency is married to an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and was seeking a research assistant.
"A resume with lots of courses in economics and a bit of information was exactly what her husband was looking for," says Crandall.
Crandall got the job and spent 18 months in the New York Federal Reserve. He then moved to Wrightson, a New York-based economic advisory firm Wrightson ICAP LLC now a unit of London-based ICAP Plc, the world's largest broker of transactions between banks.
Twenty-eight years later, it remains Crandall of Wrightson, which has built a reputation as one of the top forecaster of the U.S. economy.
Crandall is No. 1 among analysts for the two-year period ended September 30. He ranks second for its projections of change of consumer price index and the fourth in predicting existing home sales.
No. 2 general Maki
Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist Barclays Capital, the investment bank Barclays Plc, is No. 2 overall and No. 1 in predicting movements in the U.S. CPI.
The most accurate predictor of the U.S. Gross domestic product, more than three years, Patrick Franke, who works from Frankfurt to Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen Girozentrale, or Helaba, a German savings bank.
Crandall won his first post accurately predicted a monthly progress U.S. towards the erosion of the recession and grow again. He does not think the government of President Barack Obama, or a new Republican House of Representatives, controlled, can accelerate the process.
"The recovery will continue to be painfully slow, but there is much that government can do about it," says Crandall. "Some progress is being made, but from levels so sad that still have not restored a sense that things are moving in the right direction."
The recession and recovery
The classification of 64 economic analysts covers the two years from 1 October 2008, except for the ranking of GDP, which begins October 1, 2007. The two-year period was almost equally divided between recession and recovery, according to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research.
The rating measures the accuracy of economic forecasts in 13 categories, including GDP, unemployment, consumer and producer price indexes, housing sales, industrial production and personal spending.
Crandall specializes in U.S. government finance, monetary policy, trends in financing the Treasury Department and the economic data issued by the government. He says he is focused on the short term, not what will happen within a year.
"We try to offer a GPS for the economy," he says, speaking from his office in low light Wrightson ICAP in Jersey City, New Jersey, headquarters.
The building is also home to U.S. ICAP.
Wrightson Bulletin
Crandall forecasts are published in "The Money Market Observer, a daily online newsletter distributed to nearly 1,500 customers Wrightson ICAP, including economists, central bank officials, portfolio managers and traders around the world . Crandall, who travels to Jersey City from his home in Brooklyn, is the editor.
Crandall works closely in their estimates with Bill Jordan, an economist at Ried Thunberg ICAP, a research firm bond which is also owned by the London agent. Jordan is ranked No. 3 among analysts in general.
"Occasionally we have a different prognosis," Jordan, 61, says. "We agree to disagree."
Jordan Crandall and compare notes on recent economic data almost every day. However, there have been since 2007 due to Jordan works from his home in Stamford, Connecticut.
Franke Helaba Crandall and both see a slow U.S. recovery They do not predict a new recession.
Indicator Development
A key indicator of Crandall is the Architecture Billings Index, a treasure statistics created by the American Institute of Architects that tracks the U.S. commercial building. In mid-November, the index should have told him that a rebound in 2011, he says.
Helaba Franke, 42, says that data on non-manufacturing companies of the Institute for Supply Management and government figures on nonfarm payrolls to help shape his view that the U.S. economy will expand at a rate of 2 percent annually in coming years.
"Now, it's kind of a soft spot," he says. "But the ingredients for a double dip recession are simply not in place."
The U.S. economy will expand 2.5 percent in 2011 and 3.1 percent next year, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by us from November 3 to November 9.
Franke says much information is available in the U.S. economic trends that an economist would not have to live there to produce credible forecasts.
"I really do not think it makes a big difference today if you are in the country you are analyzing," he says.
Student Sinai
He earned a master's degree in economics from Boston University and worked for a year in the Boston office of Decision Economics Inc., a research firm in New York, led by Allen Sinai, before returning to Germany. He now travels to the U.S. just for the holidays, says.
Franke said to be more optimistic about U.S. economy than many European analysts.
"There are some people in Europe have a very negative view of the potential for U.S. growth," he says. "People here tend to be more pessimistic, and they see the Americans as a kind of irresponsible people, Happy-Go-Lucky."
Top forecasters agree that the speed of the U.S. recovery depends on the pace of consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. David Greenlaw, chief U.S. economist fixed income at Morgan Stanley in New York and the top ranked predictor for personal expenses, purchases expected to increase in 2011 based on the modest job growth and a flattening of the rising rate of personal savings.
Consumers is the key
"The consumer has been a key part of the change we've seen since the middle of last year," Greenlaw, 51, says. This change has been gradual. "You are edges from a low level," he says.
At the rate of employers in the U.S. are hiring, it will take years to replace the 8.4 million jobs lost as a result of the recession that began in December 2007. In October, the companies added 151,000 workers to their payrolls, the first increase since May, while the unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent.
"The real problem is the lack of recruitment," said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the highest predictor of unemployment ."Companies are not encouraged on the global economic outlook."
A key to faster growth is small business.
"We expect small businesses to account for a large share of employment growth," says Brown. And that makes life difficult for forecasters. "There's really a lot of information on small businesses," says Brown, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of California at San Diego.
Stubborn unemployment
From October, the U.S. unemployment had been caught at over 9 percent for 18 months. Brown says there is a debate among economists and policy makers as to whether unemployment is cyclical - the result of weak demand in a slow growth economy - or structural, the result of permanent changes in the U.S. labor market . due to flight of jobs abroad and other factors.
"It's probably a little of both, but more cyclical in the short term," says Brown. "In terms of long-term picture, the number of workers who expect to enter the system probably will not be growing as fast as it did in the last couple of decades."
In early November, the Federal Reserve, led by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, sought to accelerate recovery, by announcing its intention to purchase an additional $ 600 billion in Treasury securities. The aim is to increase the supply of money available for loans, trigger new spending and cause economic growth.
Inflation Outcome
Maki of Barclays Capital, says another goal of the Fed is pushing up inflation, which rose at an annual rate of 0.8 percent in the third quarter, below the long-term target range of 1-Fed , 7 to 2 percent.
"One of the risks of the Fed actively promote inflation is that inflation might be more what you want," says Maki, in addition to being second in the overall standings is No. 1 in the provision of movements in consumer prices and producer prices indexes. "The fact that prices of food and energy have so far been relatively muted is conducive to real growth."
As Crandall, Maki said that his interest in economics was sparked during college.
"I found it was a way of thinking about the world that was unlike anything that had been exposed to before," says Maki, 45, who received a BA in Economics from St. Olaf College in her home state of Minnesota before to obtain a doctorate at Stanford University.
A resident of Rye, New York, worked as an economist at the Fed from 1995 to 2000, specializing in household finances.
Mall Walker
Maki says he often is the study of prices in the supermarket and shopping center, although that does not let it influence their economic models.
"Trade in the suburbs of New York can not be a pretty strong indicator of the national trend to be really useful in predicting," he says.
Maki said that if there is danger of a resurgence of inflation, not expected to happen for a year or two.
For his part, Crandall says, "I expect a moderate growth and more rapid growth of employment in 2011. But have finally restored the feeling that progress is being made."
And you can still make this forecast, either English or Italian.
