A Conversation with Economist Marci Rossell

At the 2023 Spring Convention and Legislative Summit, we sat down with keynote speaker Dr. Marci Rossell, former CNBC Chief Economist. We covered a wide range of issues, including how people's perceptions on the economy can actually result in that perception becoming a reality, as in the case of interest rates. 

Snapshot of Dr. Rossell's Address:

Dr. Rossell told the convention audience that talk of a recession was premature and such fears will be history by the end of 2023.

“A recession requires a decline in economic activity spread across several sectors such as housing and unemployment, and that lasts six months,” she said. “In 2022, we had two consecutive negative quarters of GDPs (Gross Domestic Product) and the fears began.” She said consumer spending also must start to decline, but that also hasn’t happened.

“Has anyone flown this year? Were there a lot of empty seats? Of course not.”

The former host of the pre-market morning news show Squawk Box also emphasized that inflation is much more an economic negative than a recession, but even current inflationary impacts are starting to ease.

“Inflation peaked at 9 percent last year and the alarms went off,” she reflected. “The Feds raised interest rates 10 times over 18 months to address the increase. Since then, the rate of inflation has gone down about 1 percent each quarter. It should be back to its normal 2-3 percent range by the end of the year.”

She added that the economy today is vastly different than past years, such as with the U.S. becoming an oil producer now.  “The result is that the global price of oil today has a net zero impact on our economy compared to 15 years ago.”