The battered U.S. economy may have put behind it the worst quarter of economic growth in the current recession and could be on the rebound in 2009, according to a noted Baton Rouge  economics consultant.

Speaking at an Ascension Parish Chamber of Commerce meeting Thursday, Professor Emeritus of Economics at LSU Dr. Loren Scott said the present recession that began in December 2007 is projected to end after 19 months.
 

If the scenario plays out, the recession will be the second largest in U.S. history, but nowhere near the 43 month economic decline experienced in The Great Depression, Scott said.
 

He also downplayed unemployment figures that are bantered about as a means of comparing the recession with the Great Depression.
 

November 2008 job losses of 533,000 are not small, but still amount to only .4 of one percent of the national work force of 137 million people, Scott said.
 

A 6.5 percent unemployment rate is nowhere near the 25 percent rate experienced in The Great Depression, said the economist.

He described recessions as  “odd and weird,” and occurring in unusual times. The natural tendency of the stock market is to come back and “ninety percent of the time the economy grows.”

The Louisiana economy according to Scott is performing very differently from the overall U.S. performance. Every month except September 2007 has shown positive growth, he said.

Two key factors in Louisiana’s strong economic performance are the relatively solid performance of state banks which for the most part did not get involved in sub-prime loan lending, and the continued lending of banks to consumers and businesses.

“We are not experiencing the housing problem or lending problem that the rest of the country is,” Scott said.

The five-parish Baton Rouge area which includes Ascension Parish has continued to grow every month since the national recession started, according to Scott. The area currently has $6.5 billion in announced construction projects on the boards.

He predicted Baton Rouge would escape the recession without an increase in its unemployment rate.

By mid-2009 the Baton rouge area is expected to see an .6 growth rate, compared to expected .1 growth overall for the state.
Scott said New Orleans has $20.3 billion in announced projects, but many of the projects are not taking place yet. He said he has also noticed that no new job announcements are coming out of the city .

While the Baton Rouge economy is strong, an upcoming change to more stringent EPA Federal ozone requirements could put a damper on future growth. Scott said such a move would produce minimal health benefits and not generate a good cost-to-benefit ratio for the money spent to meet the requirements.

In the national picture, Scott said he was “a bit worried” about policy plans talked about by President-elect Barack Obama on the campaign trail, including what he called Obama’s his pro-union stance, anti-free trade approach, national health care plans, introduction of a windfall profits tax for oil companies, expanding the family leave from the workplace plan and pro-extreme green stance.

Although Obama has moderated some of his positions, Scott said he wondered if the weakness of the stock market might in part be the market factoring in Obama’s “far-left” campaign rhetoric.