The US Will Not Fall Back Into Recession, Claim Top American CEOs

The possibility of a double dip recession for the US is extremely slim, said General Electric Co’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt, ExxonMobil Corp’s Rex Tillerson, and FedEx Corp’s Fred Smith on Thursday.

The three business leaders said that while the US economy was likely remain sluggish, in the face of a political gridlock in both the US and Europe, the country was unlikely to face an outright double-dip turn that could lead into a second recession.

The possibility of a double dip recession for the US is extremely slim, said General Electric Co’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt, ExxonMobil Corp’s Rex Tillerson, and FedEx Corp’s Fred Smith on Thursday.

The three business leaders said that while the US economy was likely remain sluggish, in the face of a political gridlock in both the US and Europe, the country was unlikely to face an outright double-dip turn that could lead into a second recession.

[quote]”Recovery is underway, but it’s a long, slow recovery. Slower than we’d like,” said Immelt at the “Leading from the Middle” Conference, as quoted by Reuters.

Related: The Long and Winding Road to Recovery

“This is a lot different than 2008. There’s liquidity; there’s pockets of growth,” he added. [/quote]

Speaking at the same conference, FedEx’s Fred Smith shared his compatriot’s optimism.

“We don’t see a contraction; we don’t see a recession,” said Smith. “It’s steady as you go, slow growth.”

However, ExxonMobil’s Rex Tillerson, who was speaking at the Washington Ideas Forum on the same day, was more guarded in his optimism as he highlighted the dip in global confidence towards policy makers and their ability to reinvigorate the global economy.

[quote]”I am not as optimistic as I was six months ago. It will continue, I am afraid, to be a sluggish (U.S.) economy, and globally the economy will not perform as well as we expected,” said Tillerson. “We will have positive growth (but) it is not going to be as positive as we hoped.”[/quote]

Immelt, a lifelong Republican currently serving as a economic adviser to the Obama adminstration, also warned that the political situation in Europe and the US were hampering business and investor confidence, thus slowing growth.

[quote]”The world has problems and classic institutions have not been able to solve these problems – that creates volatility,” said Immelt. “I’d like to think that a fully functioning integrated financial system in Europe could have stopped the Greece crisis quickly. That hasn’t taken place.”[/quote]

“Congress just doing one bipartisan thing, however small,” he said “would be conducive to the market” and “be a positive to investors.”