国际英语新闻：U.S. economy unlikely to show strong recovery until mid to late 2011

CHICAGO, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. economy has shown signs of recovery in recent months with four continual quarters of growth. However, it is only very minimal and the continual strong growth will not appear until mid-late 2011, a U.S. economist has said.

David Besanko, a professor with Northwestern University of the United States, made the prediction in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua.

Besanko explained that this is due large part to the still high unemployment rate, and the lack of new government policies to stimulate growth.

Besanko has years of research experience in such areas as Macro and Micro-economics, and economics of regulation. He has had over 40 articles published in leading professional journals in economics and business, including the American Economic Review.

"Unemployment rate is still high at (nearly) 10 percent and I expect it to come down to about 8.25 percent only around late 2011, " Besanko said, adding that the persistent high unemployment rate can be attributed to a mix of three factors including low consumer spending, firms still holding back on investing and banks not spending.

"There is still insufficient demand by consumers. What's going on right now is that consumers are still deleveraging, cutting down debt that they had gotten themselves into back in 2007. Firms are sitting on cash meaning not hiring, not investing, because they don't see enough demand. Banks are sitting on cash because firms are not investing. The combination of the three led to unemployment rate still at close to 10 percent," he elaborated.