Keynote speaker reassures Expo attendees: “We will come out of this”

Published On: September 23, 2009

“It’s not the end of the world,” CNBC Senior Analyst, Ron Insana, told IFAI Expo attendees in this morning’s keynote address, even though we were ‘that close’ to going over the edge, he said, pinching his fingers together to illustrate. “We will come out of this,” Insana emphasizes, although certain aspects of the economy will never be the same.

The size of the national debt, for example, gets a lot of attention, but the deficit, is not the thing to worry about. “The real worry is pulling support too early,” he says. He’s convinced that the Federal Reserve did the right thing in dropping interest rates, and he anticipated “no chance” that the Reserve would raise the interest rate in news expected today. Nevertheless, the announcement could be a tipping point if they hint at an exit strategy, he believes, which he sees as a much more pertinent issue.

At the moment, there’s “lots of money sloshing around,” he says, “but the money is not circulating in the general economy, and if it’s not moving, there’s no action.” And although Wall Street has money, he acknowledges that “it hasn’t found its way to main street yet…[but] I think it will come sooner than most people realize.”

Janet Preus is the associate editor of Specialty Fabrics Review.