The depth of the economic slump better explains why the jobless rate doubled, climbing from 5 percent at the start of the downturn to a 26-year high 10.1 percent in October 2009.
No one would love to see a Balanced Budget Amendment for the exclusive purpose of stopping the Presidential impulse to go to war, but, our relationships around the world are complicated enough and when the USA finds it prudent to act there can't be anything preventing that. I had to swallow that bitter pill a long time ago. The House of Representatives are way out of line to impose such hideous provisions in any Debt Ceiling increase, especially, with these revelations regarding the debt of the initial recession which was brought about by Republican irresponsibility for eight long years that initiated with a destruction of a federal surplus. There is no way anyone can hold President Obama responsible for the unemployment rate in the country.
...Gross domestic product shrank 5.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, compared with the previously reported 4.1 percent drop, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The second-worst contraction in the post-World War II era was a 3.7 percent decline in 1957-58.
The depth of the economic slump better explains why the jobless rate doubled, climbing from 5 percent at the start of the downturn to a 26-year high 10.1 percent in October 2009. The strongest quarter of the recovery is now the first three months of last year. Growth decelerated every quarter thereafter.
“The overall recession is indeed deeper,” Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, told reporters this week. “This is the Great Recession, the deepest one we’ve had in the post-WWII era.”...
