August 29, 2011
The Commerce Department just released data showing that real consumption spending rose by 0.5 percent in July. This makes it highly unlikely that growth will turn negative in the current quarter. Consumption is 70 percent of GDP and this figure implies a 6.0 percent annual growth rate.
Of course consumption is not really growing that fast, more likely it is increasing at near a 2.0 percent annual rate, but maybe this number will shut up the arithmetic challenged economists who keep talking about a double-dip recession.
The economy’s problem is pathetically slow growth. We should be seeing growth of 5-7 percent as the economy rebounds from the worst downturn of the post-war period. Instead, we will be lucky if growth just keep pace with the growth of the labor force, preventing unemployment rate from rising further.
The implication is that tens of millions of people will remain unemployed or underemployed because of the Wall Street sleazes and the incompetent economists who could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble and still don’t know a damn thing about the economy. It’s a crime that they still have their jobs.
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