State Taxpayers May Eat $1.6 Million Loan for Defunct Green Bus Company
By Tom Gantert - Michigan Capitol Confidential – 06/20/2011

In September of 2009, Fisher Coachworks was mentioned in a press release from Gov. Jennifer Granholm as a “green technology” company that was part of the “new energy economy for Michigan.” Two years later, the state says Fisher Coachworks is out of business and the state has to write off $1.6 million it loaned the electric bus manufacturing company.

Edgar Benning, general manager of Flint’s Mass Transportation Authority, said in an email that Fisher Coachworks went out of business in the development phase of making two $1.1 million electric buses that Flint was going to purchase with grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly referred to as the “stimulus plan.”

Fisher Coachworks officials could not be reached for comment.

Michael Psarouthakis, vice president of business acceleration for the Michigan Economic Development Corp., said Fisher Coachworks would not repay $1.6 million in loans it had received from the state. The MEDC had approved Fisher Coachworks for a $2.6 million loan, but never gave out the final $1 million because the company was struggling, Psarouthakis said.

“It was clear that they were going to have some serious financial difficulties even with our funding,” Psarouthakis said. “They needed significant funding above and beyond that.”

James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said some green energy companies wouldn’t make it without government aid.

You can take that to the bank. :hihi:

The problem is that private business will almost always take the path of least resistance which means short term shareholder value.
-spence

I really cant believe you said that.


Oh and by the way......
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment rates rose last month in more than half of the nation's largest metro areas, driven higher by weak private-sector hiring and natural disasters.

The unemployment rate increased in 210 metro areas in May, the Labor Department said Wednesday. It fell in 131 cities and remained unchanged in 37. That's a sharp reversal from April, when unemployment rates dropped in more than 90 percent of metro areas.

Nationwide, the unemployment rate ticked up in May to 9.1 percent and employers added just 54,000 net jobs. Employers added an average of 220,000 jobs per month in the previous three months.

I wonder what % of those 54,000 jobs were temporary summer jobs
sought by High School and College kids?

Sorry, been down at a meeting with Disney. Be back to reject your counter arguments this weekend...

-spence

Fantasyland...perfect for you:uhuh:

I'm not sure...if anyone wishes to present a rational case that McCain could have seen a dramatically smaller 2009 deficit I'd love to see it.

You'd think Scott could google something up?

I think if anything the last two wars have demonstrated that sophisticated technology has it's limits...and the billions that go into programs that never even see the battlefield is astounding.

Maintaining military superiority can still be a priority, but the idea of a strong military has almost been seen as an entitlement by Congress and a free pass to spend without fear of repercussion.

Government regulation has certainly pushed a lot of industries out of the US, but much of this is due to environmental and other negative impacts on the voters. Industry has shown time and time again that when left alone it will pollute, exploit and take unnecessary risks all in the name of shareholder value.

This doesn't mean that business is evil, but a balance is probably in the best interest of everyone.

The US is a desirable place to do business with a history of innovation, free thinking and strong legal protection of intellectual property. We can justify higher corporate taxes, although I'd note that many multi-nationals seem to have found a way to evade a lot of their own tax burden. The effective tax rate doesn't seem to be nearly the second largest often cited.

Perhaps more importantly, lower taxes aren't always going to be a deciding factor in a global economy. Many companies want to develop products locally to suit specific tastes. With an increasing cost of energy and transportation production will be kept local as well.

I work with manufacturing companies and see many US businesses moving production back to the states as the low cost options of the past few decades are now proving to be more expensive in the end.

Look at any Fortune 500 annual report and where their revenue growth is. If it wasn't for emerging nations pushing tens of millions into their own Middle Class the US economy would be a shambles right now.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

The net of all this is that competing in a global economy is going to look different than what made us so strong the previous century.

Complaining about taxes and regulation isn't going to help us when nations like Germany and China are using their governments to position their private industries on a better footing through education and incentives.

You do realize those socialists in Germany with all their high taxes and oppressive regulation export more than the USA even though their GDP is 4 times smaller?

-spence

Why?


The unemployment rate isn't going to drop dramatically until we can create new growth industries.

Case in point. One manufacturing sub-segment (in aerospace) that I deal with is seeing a big increase in business right here in New England. Rather than add staff (i.e. burden) to meet increased demand, they're looking to apply technology to improve the productivity of the existing workforce.

So the unemployment rate stays the same, but the aerospace supplier and my company both benefit.

There's a reason to DOW is nearly 12,600 on Friday not even two years after a massive recession. But no, you just want to claim Obama is a failure.

If we could only get this government off our back...oy vey.

-spence

yeah...it's called QE2

Dow Up 20 Percent Since QE2 Began

Thursday, 30 Jun 2011 | 10:41 AM
The Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC.

The market began its current rally ten months ago when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke first hinted at a second quantitative easing (QE2) program during his speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming on August 27:

“Notwithstanding the fact that the policy rate is near its zero lower bound, the Federal Reserve retains a number of tools and strategies for providing additional stimulus….A first option for providing additional monetary accommodation, if necessary, is to expand the Federal Reserve's holdings of longer-term securities.”

Thursday marks the end of a $600 billion bond-buying program by the Federal Reserve.

Even as the country’s unemployment levels remained high, the QE2 rally erased the market’s post-Lehman bankruptcy losses, pushing stocks all the way up to multi-year highs back in April of this year.

Sitting at those highs two months ago, the Dow had risen 28 percent from its levels prior to Chairman Bernanke’s speech, while the S&P 500 had jumped 30 percent and the Nasdaq Composite had soared 36 percent from their levels seen before the start of QE2.


Even as economic growth has shown signs of sputtering over the past couple of months, causing stocks to retreat off their April highs, the Dow and S&P are still up more than 20 percent since the end of last August.

.................................

Fed's Massive Stimulus Had Little Impact: Greenspan
Published: Thursday, 30 Jun 2011 | 5:24 PM ETSpecial to CNBC.com

The Federal Reserve's massive stimulus program had little impact on the U.S. economy besides weakening the dollar and helping U.S. exports, Federal Reserve Governor Alan Greenspan told CNBC Thursday.

In a blunt critique of his successor, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Greenspan said the $2 trillion in quantative easing over the past two years had done little to loosen credit and boost the economy.

"There is no evidence that huge inflow of money into the system basically worked," Greenspan said in a live interview.

[QUOTE=spence;869518]You'd think Scott could google something up?

OR, I could post a lot of unsubstantiated nonsense...like you:uhuh:

Taxes and regualtion nor complaining about them won't "help" us. Only maintaing or reviving our freedom to strive and to gain from profit motives and motives to acquire and keep property will help all in a world market place

Without an understanding of why we have the current deficits we do how can you judge who's better suited to set future policy? The argument isn't that the current deficits are a good thing.

I never said we shouldn't have a strong military, rather that that entitlement has been distorted.

I'm not sure that's really practical, for instance with environmental issues especially you have waterways and air that's shared across the entire country. Should Alabama eliminate clean air standards to attract coal fired power companies then let their methyl mercury blow over to Georgia?

The context here isn't about progressive taxation but rather the impact corporate tax rates have on where companies do business.

Rather than regulation and taxation I see unpredictability as a bigger disincentive to investment right now. Companies who weathered the recession are sitting on piles of cash because they don't want to risk a lack of short-term credit disrupting operations like it did in 2008. Would a government free private sector provide a more predictable environment? Now that would certainly be conjecture...

-spence

Neither I, nor anyone I know, are anarchists. The Constitution is not an anarchistic manifesto. It mandates that we govern ourselves--individually, locally, by State, and by the Central Government in limited select functions granted to it by consent of the governed--all with the intent that the individual will be protected from the tyranny of the majority. What is most unpredictable and uncertain, is an over-arching Central Government that constantly expands its power over States, localities, and individuals in unrelenting various ways that were not granted to it. And there is great uncertainty in those sitting on loads of cash as to what direction or new tax or tax rate that has no principalled or constitutional reason, that this Central Government will create.

Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per JobThe stimulus is now causing the economy to shed jobs.
12:07 PM, Jul 3, 2011

By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.


The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

Again, this is the verdict of Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors, which is about as much of a home-field ruling as anyone could ever ask for. In truth, it’s quite possible that by borrowing an amount greater than the regular defense budget or the annual cost of Medicare, and then spending it mostly on Democratic constituencies rather than in a manner genuinely designed to stimulate the economy, Obama’s “stimulus” has actually undermined the economy’s recovery — while leaving us (thus far) $666 billion deeper in debt.

The actual employment numbers from the administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the unemployment rate was 7.3 percent when the “stimulus” was being debated. It has since risen to 9.1 percent. Meanwhile, the national debt at the end of 2008, when Obama was poised to take office, was $9.986 trillion (see Table S-9). It’s now $14.467 trillion — and counting.

All sides agree on these incriminating numbers — and now they also appear to agree on this important point: The economy would now be generating job growth at a faster rate if the Democrats hadn’t passed the “stimulus.”

I wonder if your author even bothered to read the actual report. You certainly didn't...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...rra_report.pdf

-spence

I'm sure that he laughed at this part....comedy written by drunks?

who are you/they trying to kid Spence? "employment growing on a sustained basis"....HUH????
GDP growing "solidly"???..."played a significant role in the turn around"????...."raised employment"????

this is so sad and pathetic.....

FLOTUS is spending our money like a queen

"Real GDP reached its low point in the second quarter of 2009 and has been growing solidly since then, in large part because of the tax cuts and spending increases included in the Act. ":rotf2::rotf2:



Economist: U.S. GDP growth ‘mediocre’

The U.S. GDP grew 1.9% in the first quarter of 2011, down from the 3.1% during the fourth quarter of 2010 and considerably lower than the 3.7% growth in the first quarter of 2010.


“That’s pretty mediocre growth, especially coming out of a recession,” Collins said of the GDP number.

.......................................

IMF: US GDP Growth Below 3% For Six Years Posted: June 30, 2011 at 9:02 am

It would be hard for the news about the financial status of the US to be worse. The debt cap may not be increased by August 2. Rating agencies have warned of cuts in the grade of US paper. Jobless claims have not improved. Q2 GDP was no better than 2%

The IMF has decided to pile on. It has just released its “Concluding Statement of the 2011 Article IV Mission to The United States of America”, which was finished on June 20.

The agency predicts US GDP growth will be below 3% for six years, much worse than the long-term predictions of the Administration or the Congressional Budget Office.

The data presented in the report does indicate positive and sustained growth in both GDP and employment they attribute to the Stimulus.

Anderson doesn't seem to challenge the numbers, he just distorts them to give you a little chub. I've actually tried to follow his logic and am at a loss for how he reaches the conclusions he does...as is often the case with articles like this intended mostly for quick circulation with little nutrition.

-spence

this won't shock many here :uhuh:

Oh, no Bubba...say it ain't so!!!

Bill Clinton calls for corporate tax cut
ASPEN, Colo. — President Bill Clinton says the nation’s corporate tax rate is “uncompetitive” and called for a lower rate as part of a “mega-deal” to raise the debt ceiling.

You missed an important part of Clinton's speech...

Lower the top rate, remove deductions and let the companies still pay about the same in taxes...pretty much what Reagan did in '86. It sure sounds good for the Norquist disciples and might help negotiate a settlement in the debt ceiling game of chicken that Congress is playing.

-spence

no...THE important part is Bill Clinton says the nation’s corporate tax rate is “uncompetitive” and called for a lower rate

and it completely refutes your statements and the idea, your statement "we can justify higher corporate tax rates" that higher taxes on corporations is valid a way to increase revenue, particularly right now

..........................

“When I was president, we raised the corporate income-tax rates on corporations that made over $10 million [a year],” the former president told the Aspen Ideas Festival on Saturday evening.

“It made sense when I did it. It doesn’t make sense anymore — we’ve got an uncompetitive rate."

not ambiguous



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz1RDwXxqrJ

I've never said we can justify having the highest taxes, but that we can justify having higher taxes as the US is a desirable place to do business for many industries. Certainly taxes are a factor (one factor of many) in where companies operate, but right now the effective corporate rate in the US is just over 25%, putting us lower than many industrialized nations including Canada, India, China, Brazil, Japan, Italy and Germany.

Source: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/paying-taxe...taxes_2009.pdf

Clinton is throwing the GOP a bone in an attempt to be a deal maker and at the same time take away a key Republican talking point. Lowering the Tax rate from 35% to 25% while removing deductions will produce nearly the same tax revenue according to the GAO.

If it will even out how taxes are collected it's probably a good thing to do. These stories of corporations paying little or 1/2 the statutory rate is silly.

-spence

The jobless rate is not 9.4. Anybody who lost their job when things went critical in late 08 to early 09 have all dropped off the jobless statistics. The 99'ers (those who exhausted their unemployment benefits) do not exist according to how the jobless rate is determined. The jobless rate in above 20 percent IMO and many say as high as 25% .

The source that you linked is lengthy with not a lot of reference to U.S. stats. Admittedly, I read speadily, missing a lot, but found some interesting bits.:

"Where taxes are high and commensurate gains seem low, many businesses simply choose to stay informal. A recent study found that higher tax rates are associated with less private investment, fewer formal businesses per capita and lower rates of business entry. The analysis suggests for example, that a 10% increase in the effective corporate tax rate reduces the investment-to-GDP ratio by 2 percentage points."

"36 economies made it easier to pay taxes in 2007/2008. As in previous years, the most popular reform feature was reducing the profit tax rate which happened in no fewer than 21 economies."

Eastern Europe and Central Asia had most reforms in 2007/2008--nine reformed; four reduced profit tax to 10%, one from 20% to 15% and abolished the social tax, Czech Republic reduced it to 21%.

Five OECD high-income economies reduced Corporate income tax rates. Canada is gradually reducing the corp. income tax to 15% by 2012 and will abolish the 1.12% surtax and introduce accelerated depreciation for buildings. Canada already had reduced, in 2007/2008 its corp. tax rate to 19.5%. Also reducing the corp. tax rate were Denmark 28% to 25%, and Germany 25% to 15%.

"Countries can increase revenue by lowering rates and persuading more businesses to comply with more favorable rules."

The top 5 reform features in this study were:
1--REDUCED profit tax (71%)
2--Simplified process of paying taxes (22%)
3. Revised tax code (19%)
4. ELIMINATED taxes (17%)
5. Reduced labour taxes or contributions (14%)

In the United States "taxes on profit as a share of profits before total taxes rank in the 72nd percentile (23.5%) and thus quite high by global standards. Other taxes as a share of profits before tax also are quite high in the United States primarily due to property taxes."

"In 2008, the combined U.S. Federal and average State/local corporate income tax rate is 39.3%, 50% higher than the 26.2% average for the other 29 OECD countries." This is slightly offset by the DPAD . . . reducing the effective federal corp. tax rate on qualified income to 32.9%.

Beyond the comparisons, for me, it begs the question "What's it for?" Granted that taxes are necessary to run necessary and Constitutionally granted power. But if higher taxes simply are dumped into programs that are bloated, less effective than needed and are not even Constitutionally blessed, thus distancing us even further from our foundation toward uncharted, undefined whims to garner votes, are they good?

I just linked to the doc I saw the stats referenced from...I didn't read the entire thing.

It's perfectly fair to ask how tax revenue is being used. I think we'd all agree that if Congress was more careful with our money they'd need less of it.

But the point of it all is that the US doesn't seem to be that out of line when it comes to corporate taxes when compared to our peers.

-spence

The official unemployment number is a measurement taken using one method of accounting. It doesn't reflect just people losing their jobs or the total number not working.

To jump between 9% and 20% isn't good for much beyond rhetoric, unless the argument is that the 9% method isn't accurately modeling the right trends.

There was a CATO article from last year that put the unemployment rate at less than 7% when focusing on people who had actually just become unemployed.

Perhaps more important is to use a consistent methodology. I'm more concerned with the trend...

-spence

Funny thing with the gov, they come out with a number weekly for first time unemployment, usually stating this number has dropped from the previous week. Then an hour or two later they backtrack because they find out it is up or the same as the previous week..

Rhetoric? It just shows that another 9% of the population is unemployed, and I am sure that the total of the population unemployed by now is closer to 30%

hey Spence...Sowell posted a great article about you today...you should read it....:uhuh:

Politics vs. Reality
The facts are there, but they mean nothing if they are ignored.

It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.

Not only among politicians, but also among much of the media, and even among some of the public, the quest is not for truth about reality but for talking points that fit a vision or advance an agenda. Some seem to see it as a personal contest about who is best at fencing with words.


Politics vs. Reality - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online

there is no recovery and it's gonna get worse before it gets better

For the most part, the doc you linked trends to a more Reaganesc approach to taxation--lower taxes and easier methods of compliance, the combination leading to greater government revenue.

The study has little or nothing to do with U.S. economic problems or the loss of jobs to other countries. The cost of labor probably has more to do with "shipping jobs overseas" than corporate tax burdens. Most of those jobs did not go to our high income "peers," but to where the cost of doing business was sufficiently lower to make expensive moves feasible. The total tax rate borne by business is part of its cost and is passed on to the consumer in the price of the product. So U.S. business taxes, to a point, affect the American consumer more than the seller. Taxes raised beyond a point, as the study states, have a negative impact on investment and growth.

Taxes are necessary to fund the existence of government and are good so long as the government is unobtrusive to the growth and function of an economy and to the liberty of the individual. When taxes are collected to fund government expansion into what should be private sector responsibilities, the government power grows and the citizen's power shrinks. This is contrary to the intent of this country's founding.

Yup, upto 9.2% today. Bad news always released before the
weekend hoping people won't pay that much attention.

Stimulus a complete failure.

Wake up and start cutting taxes for private industry so they know where they stand and can plan and start expansion.

Time for some genuine critical thinking and common sense, theory isn't working.

oy vey

Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus did not mince words speaking with Investor's Business Daily:

Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we'd tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.

If you're a small businessman, the only way to deal with it is to work harder, put in more hours, and let people go. When you consider that something like 70% of the American people work for small businesses, you are talking about a big economic impact.

and

[Washington piles on regulations and mandates, the impact is tremendous. I don't think he's a bad guy. I just think he has no knowledge of this.Obama has] never really worked a day outside the political or legal area. He doesn't know how to make a payroll, he doesn't understand the problems businesses face. I would try to explain that the plight of the businessman is very reactive to Washington.

Meanwhile, IBD tallies the magnates, including billionaire Steve Wynn and non-founder CEOs, who are blasting Obama's economy.

Wynn has been a staunch supporter of the Obama administration from the beginning and still considers himself a Democrat. But even more remarkable, it's been out of character for CEOs such as Wynn to express their views in such blunt terms on political matters.

"A lot of people don't want to say that," he said. "They'll say, 'Oh God, don't be attacking Obama.' Well, this is Obama's deal, and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America," said Wynn. "The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe 'we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest or (are) holding too much money.' We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists."[/B]

Business is being hammered, he said. "And I'm telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States."

Others speaking out include:

•3M's George Buckley, who blasted Obama last February as anti-business. "We know what his instincts are," Buckley said. "We've got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada or Mexico - which tends to be more pro-business - and America," he told the Financial Times.

•Boeing's Jim McNerney, who in the Wall Street Journal last May called Obama's handpicked National Labor Relations Board's suit against his company a "fundamental assault on the capitalist principles that have sustained America's competitiveness since it became the world's largest economy nearly 140 years ago."

•Intel's Paul Otellini, who told CNET last August that the U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business that there is likely to be "an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we're seeing today in Europe - this is the bitter truth."


just a sample, there are more.....

__________________________________________________ ___________
And there in lies the problem with Obama and most of congress.
Did he or anyone of them,deliever papers and cut lawns at 10 yrs old,
work as a janitor in a school when they got their working papers, work
on farms in the summer, work in a drugstore, start their own small business,
work whie going to college and work for a large corporation?

They don't have an inkling of what hard work,saving money and sacrifice are and therefore have no clue as to the workings of business.

Community Organizer, pfft. What the H???

[QUOTE=spence;869785]I wonder if your author even bothered to read the actual report. You certainly didn't...
SEVENTH QUARTERLY REPORT
JULY 1, 2011:rtfm:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...rra_report.pdf


Quote:
The analysis indicates that the Recovery Act has played a significant role in the turnaround of the economy that has occurred over the past two years.???? Real GDP reached its low point in the second quarter of 2009 and has been growing solidly since then???????, in large part because of the tax cuts and spending increases included in the Act. Employment, after falling dramatically, began to grow again on a sustained basis through 2010?????. As of the first quarter of 2011, the report estimates that the Recovery Act raised employment(JUNE 2011 UNEMPLOYMENT DATA*
(U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS) OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT: 9.2% ??????????) by 2.4 to 3.6 million jobs relative to what it otherwise would have been.

-spence

.................................................. ........................

let's compare the report...that ultimately was not worth reading... to reality

By Samuel R. Staley
The U.S. Department of Commerce released its economic growth estimates for the second quarter of 2011 and they are, well, dismal. And depressing. The economy grew just 1.3 percent from April to June of this year, well below the 2.5 percent necessary to chip away at unemployment. What’s worse, estimates of growth for the first quarter were revised downward to just 0.4 percent.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis press release:

The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from exports, nonresidential fixed investment, private inventory investment, and federal government spending that were partly offset by a negative contribution from state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The acceleration in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected a deceleration in imports, an upturn in federal government spending, and an acceleration in nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by a sharp deceleration in personal consumption expenditures.

The deceleration of personal consumer spending is particularly troubling for the Obama administration, since the entire stimulus package assumed that consumer spending was the key to reviving the economy. Goosing consumers would lead to long-term growth.

Moreover, a look at GDP growth since Obama took office surely has the president and his advisers worried:

2009 2nd Qtr: -0.7%
2009 3rd Qtr: 1.7%
2009 4th Qtr 3.8%
2010 1st Qtr: 3.9%
2010 2nd Qtr: 3.8%
2010 3rd Qtr: 2.5%
2010 4th Qtr: 2.3%
2011 1st Qtr: 0.4%
2011 2nd Qtr: 1.3%
first quarter 2011 were revised downward and if you follow along at all you know that the 2nd quarter will likely follow suit

Most of the growth in 2009 was independent of the government spending stimulus (and likely reflected the benefits of monetary policy and tax cuts). The economy began to sputter out around the time federal spending peaked. The emperor has no clothes.

The recent numbers are not good, but when you factor in continued high gas prices and global disruption caused by the nuke disaster and other events this spring there's reason for numbers to be where they are.

The same report by the government also indicated that business investment continuing to be up as companies seek to increase productivity. Hell, the North East is seeing a lot of growth in the aerospace industry keeps cranking out the orders for more aircraft. Parts suppliers in CT are experiencing record earnings.

So the GDP alone isn't reassuring but it's also not all bad.

To be honest I haven't seen anyone this giddy over bad news since Moveon.org mocked Gen. Petraeus.

-spence