>Moody’s Lowers US Economic Growth Outlook
By Tess Stynes
Moody’s Analytics said its near-term outlook for the U.S. economy has fallen significantly in the past month wake of the debate over the U.S. debt ceiling and the downgrade of the nation’s credit ratings by Standard & Poor’s .
Moody’s Analytics, a sister company to credit-ratings company Moody’s Investors Service, now expects real gross domestic product to increase at an annualized rate of about 2% in the second half of this year and just over 3% next year, compared with its estimate a month ago for growth of 3.5% for the second half of this year and through 2012.
The firm attributes most of the expected decline to a loss of business, investor and consumer confidence, noting the economy’s improving fundamentals such as the strengthening of business’s balance sheets and consumers’ strides in cutting household debt.
https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/08/15/moodys-lowers-economic-growth-outlook/