By Bruce Stokes, Director of Global Economic Attitudes, Pew Research Center
Special to CNN
In the Marx Brothers’ movie Duck Soup, Chico Marx asked: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” As 2014 dawns, this seems to be the question guardedly optimistic economic forecasters are asking recession weary pessimistic publics around the world. And many people appear to trust their experience over the views of the experts, raising new doubts about consumer behavior – the willingness to spend and to invest – in 2014.
The U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in nearly two years in the third quarter of 2013, expanding by 4.1 percent on an annual basis. And the Wall Street Journal reports that the International Monetary Fund, in its mid-January forecast, is poised to boost its current forecast of 2.5 percent for U.S. growth in 2014.
But the American public is not necessarily convinced their economy is on the cusp of a recovery.
Read more at CNN’s Global Public Square blog
