Recession near end — adviser

Press, 16 March 1982, Page 9

Recession near end — adviser

NZPA-Reuter The Reagan Administration’s top economic adviser said yesterday that the American recession was nearing an end and predicted an upturn in the nation's economy in the next three months.’ Murray Weidenbaum,' chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, also said the United States would not face doubledigit inflation so long as the Federal Reserve Board, the United States central bank, maintained its tight monetary policy.

Mr Weidenbaum. speaking in an interview on television, said: "The recession is. just about at its bottom. I think the next turn in the economy

Will be upward ... in the April, May, June quarter of this year.” But the Democratic Senator “ Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said in a separate television interview that the economy was in, serious difficulty because of Mr Reagan’s The car, steel, and housing industries were in a depression and there were recessionary pressures in most other sectors, he added. Inflation in the United States is running at more than eight per. cent. Mr Weidenbaum said a decline in wholesale prices last month represented a real drop in inflation to which President Reagan’s policies had'contributed.