The State of the Union’s Economy
credit: Joshua Davis (articnomad)With all the bad financial news in the press today, filling up your local news and the front page of your favorite paper, you’re bound to be wondering how bad the shape of the economy is. MSNBC’s John Schoen says that though a storm is on the horizon, it’s hard to say how bad it’ll get.
Though we may all feel depressed, the country has not hit a second depression, or even a full-fledged recession… at least not yet. We can’t see into the future, which means that all conjecture is just that - economic forecasters are looking to past indicators and extrapolating what is to come. However, at the end of the day, the best indicator of economic strength is the GDP (gross domestic product).
The country’s GDP measures the total value of all goods and service produced within the United States. If we want to measure the effects of the economic downturn so far, all we need do is see how much the GDP has dropped.
In the last quarter of 2007, the GDP showed growth of 0.6%. Though it is a miniscule growth, it’s growth, which means that the state of the economy isn’t as bad as we may think. However, with the loss of jobs in 2008, numbers are expected to drop into the negatives for first quarter 2008. In any case, these numbers will still show that we’re a long way off from our unfortunate 1930’s relatives.
The economy is on the downturn, no doubt, but only time will tell how deep we dive and for how long. In the meantime, we will have to see if government efforts to stimulate the economy and help out its citizens will have the desired effect.
Tags: credit | Economy & Business News
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 7:14 am and is filed under Economy & Business News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
