The US is in a recession now – could get worse
Bloomberg 7/10 (“ECRI’s LAKSHMAN ACHUTHAN: The US is in Recession Already”, http://www.businessinsider.com/achuthan-the-us-is-in-recession-already-2012-7)
What we said back in December was that we thought the most likely start date for the recession would be in Q1, and if not then, by the middle of 2012. I'm here to reaffirm that. In other words, I think we're in recession already. As I said back there, it's very rare that you know you're going into recession when you're going into recession. It often takes some big hit on the top of the head. In the last recession it took Lehman to wake people up. In the recession before it took 9/11. When you look at the data today, you see industrial production is off of its April high. Manufacturing and trade sales – much broader than retail sales – is off of its December high. Real personal income growth, which doesn't always go negative during a recession, has been negative for several months. So, its consistent with a recession having already started, and GDP – newsflash: the first quarter of a recession very often has positive GDP. Back in December, looking at leading indicators…our best guess was Q1 as the start date. If not then, mid-2012. Then, we looked at coincident indicators a few months ago. They gave us the same answer.
The econ keeps dropping-multiple indicators prove
Washington Post 7/17 (“Obama must hide from more bad economic news”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-insiders/post/obama-must-hide-from-more-bad-economic-news/2012/07/17/gJQAJr2pqW_blog.html)
Let's pause to remember that the November election will be about jobs and the economy. While America's political leadership has been consumed with whether Mitt Romney left private employment approximately 12 years ago or 10 years ago, and President Obama taunts his opponent with criminal charges, the economy is only getting worse. On Monday, the International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for global growth. This could particularly hurt exports and manufacturing in the United States. All this is happening while the American president declares his contempt for private business, attacks success and renews his call for punitive tax increases, and his Democratic allies in Congress celebrate the idea of pushing America off the "fiscal cliff" — not in pursuit of economic recovery, but to satisfy their death wish for the most productive Americans. Let's face it, Obama and the Democrats resent private accomplishment and want independent Americans to be cut down to size while the government is made a little bigger. With the economy getting worse, do you think the 2012 campaign debate about solutions will get better? Or do you think Obama will double down on distractions and wild charges about Mitt Romney and Republicans? As I said yesterday, the Obama campaign is too intense too soon. When the smoke clears from the latest grenade it has thrown at Romney, we will see even more economic rot that Obama is hiding from, and voters will be more frightened than ever. Also, bad gets worse — retail sales dropped in June as consumers worried about their future. And stocks dropped following this disappointing news. So will the campaign debate shift quickly back to jobs and the economy? If you're Obama and you don't have anything credible to say, you have to try to keep up the distractions and keep hiding from the real news. The recession continues and all the signs say it is getting worse. The president will pay a price if he continues to pretend that other things are more important. With the economy sinking, does he really believe Americans want to make it a priority to get to the bottom of exactly when Mitt Romney departed Bain Capital?
Growth is slowing to an anemic rate
BBC News, 4-27-2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17870921 (BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online news coverage.[1][2] The service maintains 44 foreign news bureaux and has correspondents in almost every country.)
US economic growth slowed to an annualized pace of 2.2% in the first quarter of the year, from 3% in the final three months of last year. The figure was below economists' estimates of 2.5% and is equivalent to quarter-on-quarter growth of 0.5%. The US Commerce Department said businesses had cut back on investment, depressing gross domestic product (GDP).
Economy Advantage-Uniqueness
The US is approaching the tipping point of a new recession
Bloomberg, 7-17-12 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/gross-says-u-s-nearing-recession-as-goldman-sachs-cuts-forecast.html (Bloomberg is a 24-hour global network broadcasting business and financial news)
Bill Gross, who runs the world’s largest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. is approaching a recession as BlackRock Inc. (BLK) expects the Federal Reserve to take more steps to support growth. Five-year Treasury yields slid to a record 0.577 percent yesterday after an unexpected drop in U.S. retail sales rekindled speculation Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will use testimony today to hint at further monetary easing. That followed data earlier this month showing American employers added fewer-than-estimated workers to payrolls. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Deutsche Bank AG cut forecasts for U.S. growth. The U.S. is “approaching recession when measured by employment, retail sales, investment, and corporate profits,” Gross,
More ev-double dip now
Jones 2012, Forrest. MoneyNews “US Has Already Plunged Back Into Recession
http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Achuthan-US-Recession-economy/2012/07/11/id/445036
The United States already has fallen back into a recession, says Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. Last year, Achuthan predicted that the U.S. economy would slide into a fresh economic contraction during the first quarter of this year. Even though gross domestic product rates are officially growing, the country for all intensive purposes is in economic decline again. "What we said back in December was that we thought the most likely start date for the recession would be in Q1, and if not then, by the middle of 2012. I'm here to reaffirm that," Achuthan tells Bloomberg Television. "In other words, I think we're in recession already. As I said back there, it's very rare that you know you're going into recession when you're going into recession. It often takes some big hit on the top of the head. In the last recession it took Lehman to wake people up. In the recession before it took 9/11." A recession is officially defined as an economy seeing at least two consecutive quarters of contracting gross domestic product rates. The U.S. gross domestic product officially expanded 1.9 percent in the first quarter though other indicators point to a deteriorating economy. "When you look at the data today, you see industrial production is off of its April high. Manufacturing and trade sales – much broader than retail sales – is off of its December high," Achuthan says. "Real personal income growth, which doesn't always go negative during a recession, has been negative for several months. So, it's consistent with a recession having already started, and GDP – newsflash: the first quarter of a recession very often has positive GDP." The Economic Cycle Research Institute publishes widely followed economic metrics called the Weekly Leading Indexes, which are forward-looking indicators closely followed by economist and markets. Officially, the U.S. has skirted above recession and continues to do so. While the U.S. economy remains in better shape than Europe, parts of which remain mired in recession and debt crises, global uncertainty continues to dampen recovery and keep hiring at bay. Since the downturn and official recovery in 2009, demand for jobs has remained weak. The U.S. unemployment rate has hovered over 8 percent for more than three years, yet for seven decades after the Great Depression, the rate averaged 5.4 percent, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing official data. Job growth has averaged 125,000 new net nonfarm payrolls a month since 2009, when the labor market was at its worst. At that job pace, unemployment rates won't even dip to 7 percent until around the end of this decade, the Journal reports. The Labor Department expects the labor force to grow to 164.4 million by 2020 based on long-run population growth and a declining labor force participation rate, mainly due to retiring baby boomers. "If the current recovery’s pace of household employment growth held on, the jobless rate would fall below 8 percent in 2014, but it would not reach 7.0 percent until late 2019," the Journal finds. "That means this decade’s jobless rate would be about 7.9 percent, the highest for a decade since the Great Depression, beating out the reigning champ of the 1980s." Meanwhile, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts will kick in at the same time at the end of this year, a combination known as a fiscal cliff that could siphon hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy and send the country right back into recession, others say."We’re close — the single worst recovery of all time," says economist Arthur B. Laffer, an architect of Ronald Reagan's economic policies, according to CNBC. If the tax increases go through to 2013, I think we fall off the cliff, to be very honest with you."
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