Another recession in America?

Although America has been slowly recovering from the deepest depths of the recession that technically lasted until June 2009, there has been less than expected growth in the first half of 2011.

“This economy is really balanced on the edge,” Harvard University economics professor Martin Feldstein, a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene. “There’s now a 50% chance that we could slide into a new recession. Nothing has given us much growth.”

Slow consumer spending, a slow housing market, high unemployment and a slow-down in government spending are all factors that contributed to five out of nine economists on an academic panel having low confidence in the economy.