OK.. LOOK, for those who are really interested, the Economy is not as jacked up as some would have you believe. Unfortunately, we live in a world shaped by headlines not facts.
Proof of this is easy to see when people make posts like this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by pocketkangaroo
While your argument may sound nice on paper, lets see how the numbers add up. When Bush took office, the market was at 10,732.46. It is now at 11,500. That's 700 point in almost 8 year, not even 10%. It's just over 1% a year in growth. That is extremely poor, especially considering that the market isn't showing any signs of recovering soon.
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First of all - the DJII is not a measure of the US economy - unless you consider that the Worlds largest, strongest economy can be measured by the performace of publically traded shares of 30 US companies. Since those are typically the largest companies in their market segment, that are hardly considered growth investments. Their 10 year historical average ROR is right around 7.5%. You neglect to mention that in that time frame, the US economy had entered a true recession in the 2nd term of the previous presidential administration that bottomed out in 2003 - with the DJII hitting the low mark below 7,800. The robust recovery engineered by the tax cuts, resulted in the DJII hitting a high mark in excess of 14,000. Thats an nearly 100% recovery growth rate over a 54 month time period.
The average unemployment rate during the last 8 years is lower that that of the previous 4 decades!
For those who don't know, in economic studies, the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters with negative GDP growth. For those who have not taken the time to look, here:
2007:2= 4.8, 2007:3= 4.8, 2007:4= -0.2, 2008:1= 0.9, 2008:2= 3.3
And yes, that last number is 3.3% thats the GDP growth rate for 2nd quarter 2008. So unfortuantely no... so recession. Is the current economic oulook in the US good? Yes. Great in fact. But unfortunately there are specific segments that are in real trouble. and yes, more banks will fail in the coming years. But who's to say thats a bad thing? Perhaps the US congress will learn yet another lesson on why its bad to meddle with the private financial industry by creating legislation that allows or even forces banks to fund high risk loans... but thats an entirely different rant isn't it.
Where is the recession????