Saturday, May 30, 2015

0.7%: A very bad number for economic growth

(My new American Thinker post)  

Another bad winter rains on the Obama parade, according to the AP:
The U.S. economy went into reverse in the first three months of this year as a severe winter and a widening trade deficit took a harsher toll than initially thought.The overall economy as measured by the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the January-March period, the Commerce Department reported Friday.The revised figure, weaker than the government's initial estimate of a meager 0.2 percent growth rate, reflects a bigger trade gap and slower consumer spending. It marked the first decline since a 2.1 percent contraction in the first three months of 2014, a slump that was also blamed on winter weather.
The good news is that the analysts are predicting a better economy now that spring is here. Of course, we remind you that they underestimated the last quarter. So could they be wrong again?
Beyond winters, maybe someone should ask a few questions about this Obama economy:  

1) We recently celebrated the 6th anniversary of that $800 billion stimulus that was supposed to stimulate the economy after what they called the Great Recession.   Don't you remember hearing about the "stimulus", actually called  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act?      

A year ago, The Wall Street Journal did a 5-year anniversary review and found this:  
The legacy is a slow-growth economy: Growth over the last 18 quarters has averaged just 2.4% -- pretty shoddy compared to better than 4% growth during the Reagan recovery in the 1980s and almost 4% in the 1990s recovery.    
Anniversary # 6 is no better than anniversary # 5! It must be those winters again!  

2) Where are the jobs in minority districts? From Baltimore to Ferguson to Detroit to Chicago, black youth unemployment is a huge problem.    

These minority districts are exhibit A of the failure of liberalism, a failure that no one in the Democrat party has the courage to point out or even challenge.

Overall, another bad quarter. We hear that the winter is responsible for this and there may be some truth to that.   

At the same time, it was pretty cold in the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush winters and I don't remember such lousy growth.

So maybe we should stop blaming winter and hold President Obama accountable. We are after all in year 7 of his presidency.

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