Stop. Please. We beg you...stop.
It obviously wasn't what CNBC hosts Simon Hobbs nor Sarah Eisen expected or wanted to hear. In stark contrast to the upbeat Federal Reserve forecasts, Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist of Mizuho Securities weighed in with a distinctly glum picture of slow growth for the near future. You can see the CNBC hosts suffering through news they didn't appear to want to hear in this video and below.
STEVEN RICCHIUTO: If you look at the domestic economic conditions I hear all this discussion about the US economy accelerating. If you look at the GDP number that we're probably going to have in the new revised report for the fourth quarter, combine that with the negative report in the first quarter; average growth for all of 2014 is about 2.3 percent. Fourth quarter over fourth quarter growth will be about 2.2 percent. That's really where the economy's been growing over the last five years. There is no acceleration in underlying economic activity. Nominal GDP growth is running approx me around four percent where it's been growing. We had a nice pickup in employment in the last couple of months. There is no doubt about that. That's squeezing productivity. The squeeze in productivity is not going to be allowed to go on very long by corporate America who needs very strong earnings to justify the multiples that they're getting in the stock market. So either we're have a decline in the earnings numbers or we're gonna have multiples be maintained by stronger earnings which can mean a slowdown in employment going forward and I think that's really going to be the limiting factor on the Fed as well as the deflationary forces are taking place overseas that we can also import on a stronger dollar.
SIMON HOBBS: Wow! Wow! That's a very long list of non-ideal situations we find ourselves in.
RICCHIUTO: And we can keep on going.
WOW! And Ricchiuto goes on to bum out the CNBC hosts even more:
RICCHIUTO: There is also this wrong concept that I keep hearing over and over again in the financial press about this acceleration of economic growth and that isn't happening. Last month we had a horrible retail sales number. We had a horrible durable goods number. We're likely to have a very disappointing retail sales number coming forward this month with a strong payroll numbers. Everything's great? It's not great.
Wow! Okay, it sounds like Simon Hobbs is definitely bummed out but what of his co-host, Sarah Eisen? Well, according to ZeroHedge's post on this interview, This Man Will Never Be Invited Back On CNBC, Eisen's lame objection was edited out: "But the key is that’s not what The Fed is telling us."
Yes, yes, Sarah. Hang on to that Federal Reserve talisman and hope for the best.
The good news for our two CNBC hosts is that no matter what happens with the economy, according to the economics adviser at Hamlin, Hamlin, & McGill, the Omaha Cinnabon will continue to enjoy a booming business far into the future.
