Saturday, 1 August 2009


COMPARE AND CONTRAST...

>> FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2009

Consider the latest economic news from the States, dear reader!


The BBC reports this under the heading "Pace of US economic decline eases" and declares...

"The US economy shrank at an annual pace of 1% in the April-to-June quarter, government figures have shown. The data was better than expected, but marked the longest period of decline since records began in 1947."

Subtext? Obama is working his special magic. Remember - better than expected.

There is another way of looking at it: Under the heading " Recession worse than prior estimates" it says...

"The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.
The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said today in Washington.

“The current downturn beginning in 2008 is more pronounced,”Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press briefing this week. The revisions were in line with past experience in which initial figures tended to underestimate the severity of contractions during their early stages, he said."