Re-Posted For Emphasis: 2nd Quarter GDP Revised Down To Life-Support Reading of 1.6% Annualized

I don't even like linking these stories anymore.

Double-Post; Ooops; Corrected. The story I linked is actually older than the one Dave linked this morning; my story is about the expected revision down to 1.4%; it was actually revised down to 1.6%. I've been avoiding these embarrassing don't-you-read-your-own-blog double-posts for a while but as you can see I'm a little... scattered today.

Ah well: I still wanted to yell about it. I am... uh, titling this "Reposted for Emphasis." Yeah, that's what I was trying to do.

...

It's nice to be vindicated. But I don't know how much more vindication the country can take.

The government is about to confirm what many people have felt for some time: The economy barely has a pulse.

That's a sharp slowdown from the first quarter, when the economy grew at a 3.7 percent annual rate, and economists say it's a taste of the weakness to come. The current quarter isn't expected to be much better, with many economists forecasting growth of only 1.7 percent.

Such slow growth won't feel much like an economic recovery and won't lead to much hiring. The unemployment rate, now at 9.5 percent, could even rise by the end of the year.

"The economy is going to limp along for the next few months," said Gus Faucher, an economist at Moody's Analytics. There's even a one in three chance it could slip back into recession, he said.

Estimates of that double dip range from 30% to "Doctor Doom's" 40%. And even if we avoid a technical recession (two consecutive quarters of below-zero growth) it is in reality a recession if growth continues at the approximate pace of population growth.

I have to ask again: Why was such a crucial matter delegated to Noble Prize winning Economist Nancy Pelosi? Why was Obama's most important task left to Chicago U. Economics Department Chairman Harry Reid?

Why was $1 trillion spent as if it was a twenty dollar bill found in the street?

It's not just that that trillion is gone. Well, it's not gone. It remains, of course, on the country's ledger as a debt that will likely only be repaid in the form of 10-15% inflation.

It's that that was our one bullet. Our one bullet, and Obama covered his eyes and fired it off into the darkness, with only Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid guiding the barrel.

The Democrats make bank on the question of "Which party has the most concern for you?" (you know the question I mean, even if I don't).

But do they? Millions of people out of work and they shit out a stimulus plan not even designed by liberal economists (they would not be my first preference, but at least they would have credentialed expertise) but by party hacks and Nancy Pelosi's staff of lawyers?

As millions of people face the soul-grinding situation of joblessness, and even hopelessness, this is how Team Talent of the Obama Administration shows how much it cares for the typical American citizen?

Playing partisan games with people's lives based on no guiding economic principle except "I won"?

posted by Ace at 03:15 PM

| Access Comments