GM says U.S. economy will avoid a recession in '08

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp GM.N expects that the U.S. housing market will start to improve by 2009 and that the U.S. economy will avoid a recession in the current year, the automaker's chief auto industry sales analyst said on Thursday.

"We continue to believe strongly that the economy will avoid a recession," Mike DiGiovanni said on a conference call.

"We believe that the issue around home sales and the housing market is going to start to work its way through in the second half of 2008 and clearly start to turn in 2009," he added.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)