The August Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published on August 13, 2015.  The headline is “WSJ Survey:  Economists Expect Fed Rate Liftoff in September.”

I found numerous items to be notable – although I don’t necessarily agree with them – both within the article and in the “Economist Q&A” section.

One excerpt:

Only one of the 60 business and academic economists who offered a prediction this month said the Fed would wait until 2016 to start raising rates.

The Fed has kept its benchmark federal-funds rate pinned near zero since December 2008 to bolster the U.S. economy through a financial crisis, a severe recession and a sluggish recovery. The U.S. central bank hasn’t raised rates since June 2006, but Ms. Yellen and other officials have repeatedly said they expect to begin later this year.

As seen in the “Recession Probability” section, the average response as to the odds of another recession starting within the next 12 months was 9.84%; the average response in July was 10.02%.

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The current average forecasts among economists polled include the following:

GDP:

full-year 2015:  2.2%

full-year 2016:  2.7%

full-year 2017:  2.5%

Unemployment Rate:

December 2015: 5.1%

December 2016: 4.8%

December 2017: 4.7%

10-Year Treasury Yield:

December 2015: 2.66%

December 2016: 3.27%

December 2017: 3.67%

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Please Note – The above is excerpted from the EconomicGreenfield.com (published by StratX, LLC) post of August 13, 2015, titled “The August 2015 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey”

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StratX, LLC offers the above commentary for informational purposes only, and does not necessarily agree with the views expressed by these outside parties.

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StratX, LLC (stratxllc.com) is a management consulting firm and strategic advisory that focuses on the analysis of current and future weak(ening) economic conditions, and offers businesses and other entities advice, strategies, and actionable methods on how to optimally adapt to such challenging, complex conditions.