The World Bank News

World Bank Top News :

Payrolls rose 200,000 in December, double the gain in November, a Labor Department report showed yesterday. A weekly measure of consumer confidence ended 2011 at a five-month high. And manufacturers reported their business in December grew at the fastest pace in six months. The combination indicates the world’s largest economy has enough staying power to withstand a recession in Europe and a slowdown in China.

“Markets are absolutely preoccupied about the risks from Europe and the U.S. housing market,” said John Herrmann, senior fixed-income strategist at State Street Global Markets in Boston, and the second most-accurate U.S. economic forecaster based on data from the last two years compiled by Bloomberg. “Yet we’re finding the economy continues to hold together fairly resiliently. We’re getting a good handoff from the fourth quarter.”

Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest asset manager, sees U.S. stock prices rising and yields on Treasury securities climbing this year as investor concerns about the outlook abate.

“We don’t need Europe to solve all its problems in 2012,” he said in a Jan. 5 note to clients. “Since there is already such a significant ‘crisis premium’ baked into the markets, just avoiding disaster could be enough.”

Doll forecasts that U.S. stocks will return at least 10 percent in 2012, beating foreign markets for a third year, as the nation’s gross domestic product expands by as much as 2.5 percent. GDP grew 1.8 percent last year, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News last month.