"Business spending will remain a key driver of the U.S. economy, not to the same extent as last year, but still a positive force," said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto"No doubt corporate-profit growth will slow this year compared with last."
"The economy is slowly improving, but it is definitely a halting recovery where we're not accelerating to any great degree," said Liam Dalton, president of Axiom Capital Management Inc. in New York.