A leading business organization is predicting that lower consumer spending will undermine the economy well into 2009.A panel from the National Association for Business Economics expects unemployment to rise to 7.5 percent by the end of 2009 and that next year's GDP growth would be 0.7 percent.
The panel expected GDP to grow 0.2 percent in 2008, in part because of a decline of 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter, and lowered its projected 2009 value for the S&P 500 index by 17 percent.
