Lou Dobbs said stronger economy by the year’s end.

Speaking to thousands of real estate professionals on May 18, CNN Anchor and Managing Editor Lou Dobbs said the U.S. economic situation can be summed up with three words: normal business cycle.

Tens of thousands of real estate professionals worldwide packed into the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel to hear Dobbs’ keynote address at the 2008 International Council of Shopping Center’s Real Estate Convention. The annual convention is the world’s largest professional real estate event.

Beginning May 17, the event’s trade expo, leasing mall and general sessions sees more than 50,000 of the real estate industry’s top representatives.

“[The U.S. economy] is in a business cycle,” Dobbs said. “It’s been our experience for the past 200 years in the country and yet we have economists acting as if the slowdown is the same thing as Armageddon. It’s just a business cycle.”

Dobbs said his advice to real estate professionals is to hold tight for a stronger economy by the year’s end.

“This economy, through its natural strength and resilience, will recover and will be recovering demonstratively by this fall,” he said.

The real estate market, which has been beleaguered by financing troubles, rising interest rates and a halting housing market, has seen a downturn in recent months.

The 2007-2008 International Council of Shopping Centers Worldwide Chairman Rene Tremblay said the economic situation presents real estate professionals with an opportunity and the convention is a time for the nation's real estate developers to decide if, as an industry, “we are going to be paralyzed by fear or be emboldened by opportunity,” he said.

Despite real estate industry woes, International Council of Shopping Centers President and CEO Michael Kercheval said the organization and the convention’s numbers continue to grow.

The conference, he said, has seen a 13 percent increase in participation in its leasing and trade malls and 321 new companies have reserved booth space at the event.

Kercheval also reported that the convention has delegates from 60 nations in attendance and a record-breaking 2,638 public sector officials filing the Las Vegas Convention Center halls. ICSC membership is up 8 percent from its 2007 tally to more than 76,000.

“[Membership from] the capital market has dipped, but that decline has been dwarfed by a surge in members from the public sector, developers and retailers,” Kercheval said.

Dobbs shared Kercheval’s bright outlook. Citing the past decade’s Internet, technology and housing bubbles and their subsequent collapses, Dobbs said the United States has seen a roller coaster economy. But, he said, he does not “believe the country will see a classic recession.”