biz.yahoo.com — The statistic did not meet what economists consider the classic definition of a recession, which is a retraction of the economy. This means that although the economy is stuck in a rut, it is still managing to grow, even if modestly.
Apr 30, 2008 View in Crawl 4
demicritterApr 30, 2008
This metric is misleading. Growth is not an accurate representation of the economy. In fact, growth is disruptive at its core. In simple terms, growth means displacement. There are fixed sizes, amounts of space or number of customers. Growth in one area means detracting from another such as a competitor. And if growth goals aren't achieved, organizations often cut personnel to help bolster their efforts. So is growth always good? Various market sectors are doing very poorly while the overall US manufacturing picture remains bleak. Areas of the US continue to lag economically due to loss of manufacturing. These factors are ignored by the economists who care only for capital growth. The social and human costs of all this growth aren't addressed in the Fed #s.
demicritterApr 30, 2008
You obviously haven't done much traveling around the US. Vacancies are huge and retail is suffering.
zeligApr 30, 2008Submitter
The ones who are suffering most are the people that speculated on the housing market and lost. Those people that inaccurately thought housing prices were going to keep rising forever. Now, we have a buyers' market.