Caterpillar Inc., the world's biggest maker of bulldozers and excavators, says the U.S. economy may fall into a recession next year. Ford Motor Co., DuPont Co. and Intel Corp. disagree.
Caterpillar cut its profit forecast on Oct. 19 because of the U.S. housing slump and said the economy would be ``near to, or even in, recession'' in 2008. U.S. stocks fell the most in two months.
Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar remains an outlier among U.S. companies. While near-record oil prices, the housing plunge and mortgage defaults will cause the economy to slow, it won't slip into a recession, said executives including Joseph Moglia, chief executive officer of TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., the third-biggest online brokerage.
``The consumer is concerned about rising energy prices, what's going on in the credit cycle and the real estate market,'' Moglia said in an interview. ``I don't believe they can have those concerns and not have some impact on what they're doing. That does not mean we're headed for a recession.''
Read Complete Story
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment