Great Prices Here

I have spoken before about the recession, and how we can try to cope with it, and now articles I have read are telling me that that is so.

This Newsweek article, The Recession is Over, reaches this conclusion based on the fact that the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, holds that a mixture of targeted investments, tax credits, subsidies, reforms, and direct purchases can preserve or create jobs in the short term, improve America’s economic competitiveness in the long term, and catalyze private-sector investment.

An article that I recently read on Bloomberg also gave me pause for optimism and made me wonder if the worst was over and we were all on our way to recovery. According to the Bloomberg article, “The worst U.S. recession in five decades probably eased in the second quarter as trade and government stimulus mitigated the damage from declines in housing, inventories and consumer and business spending, economists said.”

According to the reports, the outlook for the second quarter is better than that of the first quarter; in other words, things seem to be on the mend.  According to experts economic recession is when GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth is negative for a period of two or more consecutive quarters, and now according to the Bloomberg article, whereas in the first quarter of the year the economy shrank and 5.5%, in the next quarter, that rate had slowed down to 1.5%. it was also found that sales of new houses went up.

“The recession is entering its final hours as the credit markets have mended and the record fiscal stimulus works its way through the system,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. He added optimistically that this could well be the last quarterly decline of real GDP for this recession and that the outlook is a positive one for the second half of the year.”

I take heart from what all these experts say; and am reasonably convinced that perhaps the worst is over. What now remains to be seen is if unemployment is going to reduce which is one of the key pointers for an economic revival.

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