"Jan Hatzius" is the chief economist of investment bank Goldman Sachs. Notable for his Market trend#Bear market/bearish forecasts prior to the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, he is a two-time winner of the Lawrence R. Klein Award for the most accurate US Economic forecasting/economic forecast over the prior four years. He has also won a number of other forecasting awards, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg L.P./Bloomberg, and Institutional Investor (magazine)/Institutional Investor annual forecaster rankings.

Born in Heidelberg, Hatzius attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in economics from the University of Oxford in 1995 (advisor: Stephen Nickell). He has also worked as a research fellow at the London School of Economics.

Hatzius joined Goldman Sachs in 1997 as an associate economist in the Frankfurt office and moved to New York in 1999. He became a managing director in 2004, and succeeded former chief US economist William C. Dudley/William Dudley in 2005. In 2008, Hatzius was named to Goldman Sachs? list of partners. In 2011, Hatzius became the firm's chief economist and co-head of global economics and markets research (with Dominic Wilson).

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We continue to believe that the underlying drivers of productivity growth are turning less favorable.

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While the official productivity data look impressive, alternative measures that are equally reasonable show a much more subdued picture.

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High margins are an inducement to invest more aggressively.

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It's not plausible that capital spending has been weakened by the fact that multinationals are holding their funds abroad. I just don't believe that story.

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Oil is the dog that didn't bark. It's neutral because it's not far away from the average of where it's been over the past year.

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We do believe that the U.S. housing market is a bubble in the sense that its contribution to consumer spending is unsustainable. Households have used a large share of the recent home equity gains to supplement their spending. When these gains dry up, as they ultimately must, spending is likely to weaken substantially.

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What matters for our well-being is the net output -- remember, depreciation charges are not available for consumption -- per person in the overall economy, not the gross output per hour worked in the non-farm business sector alone.

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I'm not sure which form it will take -- maybe a lengthy period of subdued consumer spending or something more violent than that. But it's clear to me that households cannot continue to save 3 percent of their disposable income and grow debt at 10 percent per year.

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Going forward, is there still adjustment in the pipeline? I think there is. The household savings rate is low, and debt growth has accelerated. That means that consumer spending growth is going to be slow. In the next 12 months, the economy is going to do well, but it will be a temporary acceleration rather than the beginning of a normal recovery.

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