Annual Economic Outlook Conference Co-Hosted by Chamber Sees Its Biggest Crowd to Date continued…

Dr. Aleman will began the program, addressing the current condition of the national economy, the housing sector, financial markets and credit, monetary policy and the Federal Reserve, and will offered some insight into the resolution of the current crisis, both nationally and internationally.  His entertaining and enlightening presentation style captivated the audience.  He closed his presentation with a list of important points:

**The so “talked about” housing market crisis is coming home to roost

**The probablility of a recession has increased considerably

**Inflation remains a long-term concern for the Fed

**The U.S. dollar weakness is not good for inflation

**The housing market crisis is not letting go and may stay with us for a while

**However, the rest of the U.S. Economy has done well so far

In his presentation, Dr. Waldman, Senior Economist at UNM’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER), will discussed recent developments in and outlook for the New Mexico economy.  Dr. Waldman’s talk echoed that of Dr. Aleman in terms of concerns with the state of the economy.  Layoffs in construction, manufacturing and mining have contributed to a slowdown in economic growth.  Statewide, about 13,000 new jobs were added to the state during 2007.  His overall assessment and summary for the state:

**The pace of economic expansion in New Mexico has been on the decline for the last year-and-a-half (2006:2 – 2007:3).  Both nonfarm employment and total personal income have posted consistently smaller quarterly growth rates during that period.  Still, New Mexico economic performance was better than in the nation as a whole.

**The causes of the continuing slowdown in New Mexico can be traced in major part to several sectors:  construction, mining, and manufacturing.

**The New Mexico economy is slated for only moderate growth between now and 2012.  Nonfarm employment growth will average between 1.5% and 1.7% each year.  Personal income growth will reach 6.5% in 2007, but will fall to near 5.0 percent each year thereafter.

**Strength in the next few years will come from the following sectors:  health care & social assistance, information (film industry), professional & business services, and educational services.

Closing out the conference speakers, Ron Gifford from the Indy Partnership presented a model of cooperative regional economic development, which has been quite successful as applied in a ten-county partnership in Central Indiana.  The addition of a regional theme in this year’s conference was especially due to the local effort of the Central New Mexico Business Coalition on Regionalism. The coalition, composed of groups representing Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance and Valencia Counties and Edgewood, is currently working on initiatives to bring the Albuquerque region together in economic development efforts.

Central Indiana has overcome many challenges over the last several years to get that region focused on the area as a whole, rather than as individual cities and counties and as a result has significantly grown its regional economy.

Mr. Giffords’ “lessons” for conference participants:

**Strong, committed leadership is key

**Have both a long-term vision and short-term goals

**Develop a public-private partnership

**Leverage existing assets

**Set ground rules and follow them

**Pretend it’s T-ball: Everyone plays!

To check out speaker’s presentations, visit the conference website at www.economicoutlooknm.com

Next year’s conference date will be announced soon, so stay tuned to the Memo for more information!

Thanks to the conference partners: Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, Wells Fargo, UNM, PNM, Univeristy of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research and the New Mexico Business Weekly.