Any good financial adviser will tell his novice clients to refrain from checking the stock market every day to see how their investments are doing. It’s the long term that counts, not the volatility of daily buying and selling on the exchanges. That same caution should be applied to trying to keep track of the current economy, which seems to swing from inflation to recession at the drop of a hat. It’s up to each family to properly assess its financial condition and buy and spend accordingly.
Technically, this country is now in a recession, which by definition is two consecutive quarters of decline in a country’s gross domestic product. America’s $21 trillion GDP, which is No. 1 in the world, decreased 1.6% during the first quarter of this year and 0.9% during the second, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.
That’s a recession, but it’s nowhere near the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when GDP fell 4.3%, the unemployment rate rose to 10%, and 15 million Americans couldn’t find jobs. Compare that to the current 3.6% unemployment rate and six million unemployed.
