The nation's economy has probably hit its low point and should start improving in the next six months.

That's what speakers told about 80 people at the semi-annual Economic Outlook Conference at the Fluno Center on the UW-Madison campus Friday.

"I think improvement in the economy is imminent," said Clare Zempel, founder of Zempel Strategic in Milwaukee and former chief economist for Robert W. Baird & Co. "The slowdown should be in the process of slowing down."

The stock market also is close to swinging back up, said Doug Ramsey of Leuthold Weeden Capital Management, Minneapolis. Consumer spending on non-essentials has fallen 35 percent from June 2007 to July 2008 and "collapsing consumer confidence tends to be a positive time" for the stock market, Ramsey said.

"Consumer, investor and business attitudes are so depressed, we think there will be a turnaround in the stock market early next year," he said.

The housing situation remains a considerable problem, though, Zempel said. He cited the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller Home Price Index, which shows Phoenix is among the hardest-hit cities, with a 33 percent drop in the value of the average home over the past two years. Nationwide, the average decrease is 18 percent.

At the peak of the home-buying boom in 2006, home prices nationwide averaged more than four times the median income. A more realistic figure is three times the median income, Zempel said.

He projected that home prices will "start to bottom out" in the first half of 2009. "But there will still be the problem of unaffordability," he said.

Zempel blamed the subprime mortgage crisis for much of the economy's slowdown, but Charles Payne, chief executive with Wall Street Strategies, an independent stock market research firm in New York, blamed consumer greed.

"The global economy spent itself into oblivion, led by America and its unquenchable thirst for more stuff," Payne said. "Many began to use their homes as bottomless piggybanks. New cars. Flat-panel televisions. Vacations. Fun, fun and even more fun."

In Wisconsin, stronger economic growth should begin to be apparent in 2009, Zempel said. That's more optimistic than a state Department of Revenue report issued Friday. The report says that while exports will continue to be strong, growth in Wisconsin's economy will "remain slow throughout 2008 and 2009 as the national economy continues to weaken."

Employment will start to recover in Wisconsin in late 2009, with a growth rate of 1.6 percent forecast for 2011.