If financial conditions fail to improve quickly, near-term economic prospects could deteriorate markedly. Still, the NABE panel expects that lower oil prices, a bottoming out in home prices and a better functioning of financial markets should enable the economy to resume trend-like growth by the second half of 2009.

—Chris Varvares, NABE President-elect and the president of Macroeconomic Advisers, said in a statement.

It is pretty much all out war. They are pulling out all the stops to try and get borrowers and lenders to meet and do transactions once again.

—Christopher Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ