In his quarterly economic forecast Wednesday, Rajeev Dhawan said the U.S. should worry some about the European debt crisis or the Iran-Israel conflict, but there are other issues to focus on.

Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson School of Business in downtown Atlanta, talked for about 90 minutes on the future of the U.S. and global markets at the college’s quarterly conference.

He said China’s economic slowdown should be a major concern.

“I’m most worried about China and the other emerging markets, [including] Brazil,” he said. “The trade surplus went up a lot in the last five years and then went down. China’s growth problem of U.S. Treasury bonds went up starting with 2008, then dipped, then went back up.

“Sixty percent of the world is in a slowdown or in a recession, 25 percent is the U.S. and 15 percent is the rest of the world.”

In a news release announcing his quarterly Forecast of the Nation report, Dhawan said economic growth in 2012 will be “reasonable,” adding the gross domestic product growth of 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, plus the addition of 603,000 jobs between November and January and 14.1 million new vehicle sales in January “created a false perception of acceleration in economic growth.”

“The economy’s output capacity has not increased in a fundamental sense since last summer and the factors preventing the economy from reaching its full potential remain in place,” he said.

Dhawan predicts the GDP to increase by 1.4 percent in the first half of 2012 and 2.1 percent for the second half, with the GDP going up to 2.3 percent in 2013 and 2.7 the following year.

He expects the U.S. economy’s rate of 200,000 jobs being created each month to remain steady, with a low of 150,00 jobs per month. In Georgia, he said, 14,300 jobs, including 2,500 premium ones, will be added in 2012, and its unemployment rate will be 9.7 percent, only 0.3 points lower than levels last year. Dhawan also said overall unemployment figures are misleading, adding many people have stopped looking for jobs or going back to school.

As for the rest of the world, Dhawan said Greece’s debt problems are far from over, even though a bailout deal was authored Tuesday.

“The so-called Greek debt deal that was just signed yesterday still has to be finalized. … Would you want to give them the money?” he said.

In Iran, where tensions with Israel could pressure Iran to close or block the Strait of Hormuz, where one fifth of the world’s oil must travel, causing oil prices to rise, Dhawan is confident war will not come to the area.

“With the Iranian mess, you’re going to have a jump in the price,” he said. “I don’t think they [Iran and Israel] are going to go to war. It’s going to be a two-day problem, a lot of talk, and things will blow over.”

During the question-and-answer session, Ali Dadpay, an assistant economics professor at Clayton State University in Morrow, asked about the economic impact Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s new international terminal will have.

Dhawan said the new terminal will have a positive impact but it could take time to see it. He added the planned Caterpillar plant near Athens, announced Monday, will ramp up jobs (an estimated 1,400) in the area.