WASHINGTON - Donald Trump's prediction that the US economy was on the verge of a 'very massive recession' hit a wall of skepticism on Sunday from economists who questioned the Republican presidential front-runner's calculations. In a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post published on Saturday, the billionaire businessman said a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump. He put real unemployment above 20 percent. 'We're not heading for a recession, massive or minor, and the unemployment rate is not 20 percent,' said Harm Bandholz, chief US economist at UniCredit Research in New York. The official unemployment rate has declined to 5 percent from a peak of 10 percent in October 2009, according to government statistics. But a different, broader measure of unemployment that includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment is at 9.8 percent.
(photo credit: The Jerusalem Post)Updated: