And oddly upbeat story in the Washington Post about how the economy is so bad that no matter where things go, they really can't get THAT much worse.
The U.S. economy has been through a lot in the past few months — an unprecedented downgrade of the government’s credit rating, a debt crisis in Europe that threatens to spread across the Atlantic, and a steep decline in financial markets. Yet most economic indicators have pointed to continued, albeit slow, growth.That might all make sense on paper, but really? I can imagine it getting a lot worse. How about the credit markets freezing entirely again? How about even more foreclosures? And as for business having already cut back to bare bones, so they can't and won't cut back further (per the article), sure they can - it's called declaring bankruptcy and shutting down.
It isn’t the resilience of the U.S. economy. Rather, it’s a sign of how bad things have already become. Many of the key sectors that usually cause economic contraction, including housing and durable goods such as automobiles, are already at such low levels that they don’t have much more room to fall.
I appreciate the sentiment behind the article - cheerio and all that - but yeah, things can get worse.
