Run for the hills! The U.S. economy, the mighty machine that powers global commerce, stalled out and seems to be headed in reverse. The Commerce Department Thursday reported its much-anticipated revision of growth for the first quarter of 2014. Upon further review, and taking new information into account, the green-eyeshade types at the Bureau of Economic Analysis revised the estimate down—from the previously reported, anemic annualized rate of .1 percent growth to a truly craptacular annualized decline of 1 percent. In other words, adjusted for inflation, the $17 trillion U.S. economy was actually smaller on March 31, 2014 than it was on December 31, 2013.
Or not. Don’t add “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” to your playlist just yet. The U.S. economy isn’t in recession and it’s not about to enter one.
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