Special Briefing: 2022 Outlook for States and Cities

At the start of 2022 panelists join to discuss the anticipated path of the US economy, inflation, interest rates, the impact COVID-19 continues to have, and whether state and local governments face a “fiscal cliff” as federal pandemic budget aid is expended. This special briefing features a panel of experts, including Lucy Dadayan, senior research associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute; Larry Johnson, Commissioner, DeKalb County (Georgia) Board of Commissioners and president, National Association of Counties; Eric Kim, senior director, Fitch Ratings Inc.; Torsten Slok, chief economist, Apollo Global Management, and Mark Zandi, chief economist, Moody’s Analytics

 Notable Quotes: 

“From a county perspective, we look at the funding we’ve received so far from Cares. For instance, for us in DeKalb, this past weekend we gave out about 10,000 free at-home COVID tests to residents in our community,” Larry Johnson 

“For 2022, Fitch is projecting US GDP growth of 3.7%, that’s down from the 5.7% we estimated for 2021, but still well ahead of the 2% average we were seeing pre-pandemic,” Eric Kim 

“What is promising is that we see that local governments are also putting aside money in rainy-day funds. Of course, it all depends on what happens next. We have been seeing a growth in natural disasters, in the number of wildfires, the number of hurricanes, and my advice would always be it is better to be prepared than to be sorry,” Lucy Dadayan

. “The year should be a solid one, I expect a GDP growth of about 4%. That means we will create enough jobs to get the economy back to full employment by the end of the year,” Mark Zandi

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Special Briefing is published by the Volcker Alliance, as part of its Public Finance initiatives, and Penn IUR. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the panelists and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Volcker Alliance or Penn IUR.