Albert W. Niemi, dean of the business school, said he believes 2015 will be a good year for the U.S. economy, as will 2016, 2017, probably 2018 and maybe even 2019. “I’m beginning to think this might be the longest expansion in the history of the American economy,” he said.
Other experts were mostly upbeat, but expressed reservations concerning consumer debt, government overregulation and the public tax burden.
One conference participant, Harvey Rosenblum, professor of business economics, and retired executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, agrees the upward trajectory is likely to continue unless there is another financial crisis started abroad. “The Federal Reserve is not going to get off of its zero-interest-rate policy until spring or summer of next year,” he stated.
But even then, he expects that rates will go up ever so slightly. “We’re talking about monetary policy that still has the pedal to the metal. It’s very hard to fall into a recession when monetary policy is as expansive as it is. The Fed isn’t going to pull the plug.”
Housing starts, the experts said, will be 1.2 million units in 2015, more than double the 550,000 homes begun in the depths of 2009.
However, this key economic component is held back by post-subprime regulations that have gone too far and that even bankers don’t understand, according to Scott MacDonald, chief executive of SMU’s Southwest Graduate School of Banking.“In trying to protect people with less-than-stellar credit, they’ve made it impossible for them to get a loan.”
Another area of concern that might be the extremely slow overall increase in employment. While some industries and geographical areas are booming and hiring a lot of people, others are not.
Neimi said that although the U.S. economy added an average of 241,000 net new jobs each month through November in 2014, it takes 150,000 jobs just to absorb people like his college grads who join the labor force each month.
Another concern is that there is a shift from high-paying manufacturing jobs to retail and fast food employment.
A manufactured housing (MH) corporate leader told MHProNews that while MH and conventional housing are both rising, industry and association leaders must look at why the percentage increase of new MH shipments aren’t rising at the same pace as housing in general.
An OpEd by New York Housing’s Nancy Geer addresses some thoughts of that industry veteran as to steps the industry should consider in advancing in a more robust fashion.
Given rising rents and steady economic improvement revealed in meetings like the one at SMU, the MH Industry should be well positioned for growth. ##
(Al Nemi, SMU photo credit: SMU Cox School of Business)
