The economy grew in the third quarter because the savings rate stopped rising and instead reversed, and because the fall in private inventories slowed. Unsustainable trends reverse is the only message, and economies naturally right themselves.
Unemployment remains high and it is going to remain high for some time, and GDP remains below its peak level and will remain so for some time. The english word used to describe the period of time in which those things remain true but GDP growth is positive, is "recovery".
I am so sick of people trying to substitute their doom mongering political spin for objective economic or financial analysis. It is bad enough when the infantile left does it, they lie for a living and want to live in fantasies; when the right, which is supposed to know economics and be willing to face reality squarely, does it, it is just pathetic.
[I am so sick of people trying to substitute their doom mongering political spin for objective economic or financial analysis.]
Sane people do not listen to you Jason. You’ve been predicting a rebound for many months and all to no avail.
>> Oh utter horsefeathers, you can’t selectively remove pieces of the national product accounts and pretend you are measuring the economy. <<
I don’t pretend to be able to report a measurement of the private sector economy shrinking; any subsections of economic growth I cite are the government’s own reports. I only point out that government spending is driving the current growth, and that the growth in government spending is not sustainable. I make no claims such as “Without this growth, the economy would have shrunk 1.3%” nor do I write any predictions, such as that “the economy will shrink in 1Q 2010 by 1-2%” even though many economic experts have made such predictions.
>> I am so sick of people trying to substitute their doom mongering political spin for objective economic or financial analysis <<
I don’t think you’re at all fair to me. I’m not doom-mongering. In fact, I’m fairly bullish on the long-term economy. I don’t believe in peak energy, and I see a huge number of technological advances which could reignite the industrial age, which has heretofore given way to the information age.
I have seen articles predicting 100-trillion-dollar bank failures and the collapse of our entire financial system. Or talk of the “real” unemployment rate hitting 30%. You don’t see that in my articles, because I don’t concur with their predictions. But I do believe the FY2009-2010 growth will be insufficient to reverse escalating unemployment rates within that fiscal year, or restore our budget deficits to economically sustainable levels. And, yes, I believe a debt which grows at a rate less than the rate at which the GDP (unadjusted for inflation!) grows is economically sustainable, so I’ve not even been one of those deficit alarmists... until the deficit went completely berzerk in 2008.
And none of my statements can be predicated on any such economic or fiscal disasters taking place.