What financial collapse? What Great Depression of the 21st Century?http://www.siliconinvestor.com/headlines/financial/20020228/419837.html
<Feb 28 1:08pm ET
By Joanne Morrison
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A surge in U.S. consumer and government spending helped the economy grow better than first expected during the last three months of 2001, supporting wide belief the United States is on the road to recovery.
Gross domestic product, the broadest gauge of the economy's health, expanded at a revised 1.4 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, seven times the 0.2 percent rate first estimated, the government said on Thursday.
The manufacturing sector, hit hardest in this latest recession, is also showing improvement, with a key index on Thursday showing for the first time in 18 months expanded economic activity in the Midwest.
Adding to that brighter picture, the government's latest data showed a weak, but improving U.S. labor market, with a smaller-than-expected number of workers applying for jobless benefits. For the past eight weeks in a row, these initial claims have remained below the key recessionary 400,000 level.
The government's sharp upward revision in GDP -- driven by an increase in consumer spending on big-ticket items like automobiles, the biggest rise in government spending since 1978, and lower imports -- supports Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's assessment Wednesday that the U.S. recession was ending.
"It shows that the economy is out of recession," said Larry Wachtel, senior vice-president at Prudential Securities. "It is a good number and I think the first-quarter GDP will be up 2 to 3 percent. The market is celebrating a little bit."...>
Yep, Al Akba! In Al We Trust.
Thread participants should all donate US$100 to an award to Uncle Al for great services rendered to humanity at a time when a lot of people have put their feet up and watch Days of our Lives and Oprah.
I've noticed that some odd characters in this discussion think Uncle Al isn't sublime. That's a puzzle. They even blame him because hordes of greedy maniacs bid the dot.con and telecosmic hysteria to absurd levels. They seem unable to understand that raising a price in an auction requires zero money printing or expansion of money supply. They blame Al. Well, it's traditional for people to blame somebody else for their woes, and simplistic people like simplistic solutions. They'll blame the gods if they can't find somebody handy to toss on the Aztec heart transplant pulpit.
The bubble was not caused by printing money. If that was true, we would right now be in a huge bubble! We are not, because the mania has been deflated. The New Millennium, combined with technofun and get-rich-quick, no more nuclear threat, no more USSR, the peace dividend, globalisation and all the good stuff made too many people get too excited and bid too much. Uncle Al was an innocent bystander, warning people about irrational exuberance. He had put interest rates up to a reasonable extent, so that at least, when the inevitable happened and reality dawned on the mania, and the wealth effect and Sudden Wealth Syndrome turned to Sudden Poverty Syndrome, he'd be able to help out a bit by slashing interest rates and printing up a storm to try to ameliorate the inevitable plunge.
Actually, the world is a multivariate interactive place, where butterflies in Russia can precipitate hurricanes in Wall Street.
Mq |
