Economist Elliot Eisenberg makes a yearly trek to provide the Denver Metro Association of Realtors with a forecast. On Thursday he provided a mea culpa to his audience for telling them last January to prepare for a recession that never came.
“I was wrong,” he said, noting that U.S. consumers have proven “remarkably resilient” and that he is optimistic the country can pull off something rarely seen — a sharp hike in interest rates without a downturn, also known as a “soft landing.”
He and other recession forecasters expected consumers would run out of spending steam as their pandemic savings cushion, which hit $2.1 trillion in August 2021, dwindled. That money did run out around March. But consumers, who account for about 69% of economic activity in the U.S., didn’t skip a beat…