Articles About GDP

Ben Bernanke has spoken.  The Fed chairman and the Federal Reserve moved recently to stimulate the economy when the policy-making committee cut the federal funds rate – the rate at which banks lend to each other – to just one percent.  This represents a half percentage point cut from the previous 1.5 percent rate.  By […]

Contrary to the recent grim news about home foreclosures, bank failures, the credit crunch, rising unemployment rates, soaring oil prices, inflation and stock-market jitters, the United States’ economy — surprisingly — grew by 3.3 percent during the second quarter of 2008. The economy grew at its fastest pace in nearly a year, thanks primarily to […]

The 2nd quarter of 2008 ended with a slight economic rebound – an extremely lethargic one – that raises new fears of a recession.  The Commerce Department reported that the GDP increased at an annual rate of just 1.9 percent from April through June.  Although an improvement over the feeble 0.9 percent reported during the […]

Have you noticed that some of your favorite stores are disappearing?  Tough economic times have made people rethink their discretionary spending, and that is impacting specialty retailers.  According to a study by Commercial Property News and Claritas, a CPN-sister company specializing in retail-related demographic and marketing research, retailers are rethinking their 2008 growth plans. The Standard […]

With all of the bad news about the housing market and the impact of sub-prime loans, its worth putting this in a historical context.  The U.S. mortgage market totals $12 trillion. Of that, $2.4 trillion is sub-prime loans.  Of this 20% of the debt will go bad — about $400 billion.  That equates to 3% […]