If anything, the optimism among American forecasters has intensified in recent weeks.
In expectation of an imminent upturn, they have focused on a growing number of economic indicators that show an improvement from the previous month -- if not in business investment, then in consumer spending and housing.
The latest spur to optimism came on Friday when the Labor Department announced that employers had eliminated 89,000 jobs in January, down from 130,000 in December, and the unemployment rate had fallen to 5.6 percent from 5.8 percent -- mainly because thousands of unemployed dropped out of the labor force and were no longer counted.
No one at the World Economic Forum spoke more exuberantly about the American economy than Gail Fosler, chief economist at the Conference Board, a New York research organization. "My role is to spread a little glee," she said at a packed session on the global economic outlook. "The recovery has already begun in the United States."
Like other American forecasters, Fosler argues, in effect, that once all the data catch up with what is actually happening today, the upturn will turn out to have started about now, nearly a year after the recession began.
Fosler appeared on the same panel with the more pessimistic Zimmermann of Berlin and also with Fan Gang, director of a Chinese economic research institute, who tactfully said nothing about the US, but declared that China's now booming economy might be headed for contraction, joining the rest of the world.
He blamed the yen, in part. Its falling value hurts Chinese exports, by making them relatively more expensive than Japanese goods. The rising value of the dollar, against the yen and other currencies, should also make Americans uneasy, several foreign experts said.
A strong dollar
For the moment, however, the strong dollar encourages foreigners to invest their savings in the US, in effect lending to the ever more indebted US. But once the dollar begins to weaken a bit, many foreign experts argue, the economy will slow, because the lending flow will be cut back and the cost of borrowing in the US will rise.
"We are more worried about this than you are," said Jacques Aigrain, chief executive of the Swiss Reinsurance Co, headquartered in Zurich.
Only one American economist participating in the World Economic Forum -- Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley -- openly shared the pessimism of the non-Americans, and his pessimism stood out. Roach appeared on the panel with Fosler, and he aimed most of his comments at her optimism.
She put her faith in consumer spending, the still strong housing market and her expectation that rising profits would restart investment, particularly investment in high-tech electronics gear.
Roach, in contrast, emphasized the downward pull of heavily indebted Americans and the frequent downsizing as companies closed factories and offices and laid off workers, to shed excess productive capacity.
At least one foreigner offered Fosler some support. "Let's not underestimate all the stimulus that the Federal Reserve has provided with its rate cuts," said Rakan El-Hoshan, managing director of the Hoshan Co, which sells office equipment in Saudi Arabia. "If there is not a recovery in America soon with interest rates as low as they are, then there is something fundamentally wrong."
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