This past Friday, local economics maven, Hofstra Professor, and Marketwatch.com icon Irwin Kellner came to LIMBA, to give us his outlook on the national economy, and Long Island in particular. The main subject of his talk revolved around housing prices, and an explanation of why, in his view, the housing market has topped out for this cycle.
Starting with the national economy, we're at middle age for the current expansion, and energy pricing, plus the interest rate rise is doing a good job of putting the brakes on. The household negative savings rate has not been seen since 1933. He sees growth slowing to 0% by the end of the year. Interest rate hikes are predicted to continue for 2 or 3 more quarters.
One of the brilliant things about LIMBA is, for the price of a membership ($150/year) and $10 a breakfast, (or $20 a breakfast for non-members) you can listen to, and ask questions of people like Dr. Kellner, who gave us a 20-minute tutorial, with customized data, on the Long Island economy and it near term prospects. We covered housing prices and inventory, sales tax revenue, and jobs data for both counties. In the Q & A section, we got his explanation of what the measured unemployment rate is, and why the rate of people voluntarily quitting their jobs is a better measure of how good or bad the labor market is.
Dr. Kellner was also gracious enough to distribute a few invitations to Linda Fairstein's upcoming lecture at the Scott Skodneck Business Development Center at Hofstra





