Fannie Mae Ups GDP Expectations for 2020 and 2021

Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research (ESR) group is upgrading its forecast for business fixed investments (BFI) for the second half of 2020 and beyond and have upgraded expectations for the GDP in both 2020 and 2021 by a tenth of a percent to 2.2% and 2.1% respectively. This despite both the problems faced by Boeing and the fears about the global impact of the coronavirus. The ESR did substantially lower their annualized GDP forecast for the 1st Quarter of 2020, from 2.3% down to 1.9%. Stating that this does not reflect a change in their view of the underlying growth but reflects instead that the expected growth in government spending and housing construction were partially realized in the 4th Quarter of 2019.