Al's Third-Quarter Forecast: Expect Slow Economic Gains

What's ahead for the 3rd Quarter:  The July thru September transition between the Height of the Summer and the Start of the Fall?

Will it bring more moderate gains like we've seen the First Half of 2010, or will it continue the "Slow Patch" of Economic Declines recently described by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke?

The past few weeks have seen some of the best overall gains on Wall Street over the past 2 years. The Dow recently picked up more than 600 Points, propelling it over the 12,600 mark. We can ask again, will we see the 13,000 Mark in the near future as we get deeper into the 3rd Quarter?

The U-S economy has made some decent gains since last year.

But there are still some long-term problems that are *not* expected to improve much at all until possibly much later in the year.

On the Upside, those Rising Gas Prices are stabilizing and actually dropping here and around the country. It's a good sign that could leave more money in our monthly budgets and help spur more spending and ultimately more hiring.

But some analysts say big questions remain on where the U-S Economy is heading and if the recovery can pick up speed from our current "Slow Patch".

Lane Jones, of Coral Gables based Evensky & Katz says " The Big Question now is whether we'll rebound from the soft soft patch and get back to the momentum going back tot he closing of last year and the economic growth remains on track  and we start to pull away from as we say the escape velocity, to pull away from the crisis of the last year".

Ok, so what does it all mean to you and me?

With no early agreement out of Congress on reducing the National Debt, expect continued Stock Market volatility as investiors worry about a possible default of loans. Uncle Sam faces the dilema of basically running out of money, raising taxes, cutting back Federal Programs like Medicare, Social Security and Defense Spending or deepening the U-S Debt.

With such continued uncertainty,  Businesses here and across the country may remain reluctant to boost much more hiring over the summer.

But Rock-Bottom prices and reasonably low interest rates may help our South Florida Real Estate Markets and prices could continue to stabilize.

Expect summer spending to be better than last year as consumer confidence slowly improves.

Boosted by moderate spending growth, we should see continued  gains to the overall U-S Economy thru the Fall.

But Summer Tourism for us locally could be better than last year.  And Back- to-School Spending is  just around the corner.

So during the rest of the 3rd quarter, our Economic Recovery could start off slowly and hopefully pick up speed as the Fall Spending season approaches.

But that's what may be around the corner for the 4th Quarter.

And that's a whole different Forecast.

Check back in October to see how I did!