Local Fed Chief Doesn't Foresee Recession

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With consumer confidence falling in tandem with the stock market, some officials have begun to worry that consumer spending will soon decline and pull the U.S. economy into recession.

But Thomas M. Hoenig, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, doesn't think that scenario is likely to occur.

"There's a little bit of disconnect right now between what's happening in the real economy -- what I call the real economy -- and the financial (markets), especially the equity markets," he said.

Hoenig, a member of the Federal Reserve System's Open Market Committee, the key body with authority over monetary policy, said several factors have …