Among the people who are growing more optimistic about the near-term future, you can add America's CEOs. The Business Roundtable just released the results of its first-quarter survey, and it found that in general, CEOs expect the economy to continue expanding, and predicted that their own sales, capital spending and hiring were likely to increase over the next six months.
A whopping 81 percent of the respondents said they expect their corporation's sales to be up over the next six months. That's up from 69 percent who said so when this survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2011. Nearly half, or 48 percent, said their company's capital spending would be increasing, up from 32 percent who said that in the previous quarter. Forty-two percent said their hiring would increase, versus only 16 percent who said it would be decreasing.
The 128 CEOs surveyed also predicted that U.S. GDP would increase by 2.3 percent in 2012. That's up from the 2.0 percent that the same group predicted last quarter, and up from the 1.7 percent the American economy grew by in 2011.
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