NEW YORK – Analysts have slashed their forecasts for U.S. economic growth, predicting that federal policymakers won’t begin raising interest rates until 2010, based onthe latest monthly survey by Bloomberg News.

Consumer spending is expected to fall at a 1.6-percent annual pace in the current quarter, improving from the fourth quarter’s anticipated 2.7-percent rate of decline, according to the median prediction of 59 economists surveyed between Jan. 5 and Jan. 12. “There’s nothing good out there for the consumer except cheaper gasoline,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. in New York.

The survey also called for the nation’s gross domestic product to shrink at an annual rate of 3 percent in the current quarter, after contracting at a 5-percent rate in the final three months of 2008 rather than the 4-percent rate predicted in last month’s survey. And for all of 2009, it predicted the GDP will shrink 1.5 percent, rather than the 1.0 percent of last month’s forecast. (READ MORE)

“We’re in the middle of something very deep here,” said Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, who saw little likelihood of improvement in the year’s first half. “This is a once-in-a-century crisis,” agreed Ian Morris, chief U.S. economist at HSBC Securities USA Inc. in New York, predicting that “we’re about to see a once-in-a-century response. We could be in for a wild ride.”