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U.S. economy is reaching a crossroads
The latest revision of third quarter GDP finds the U.S. economy growing even faster than we'd thought this summer -- 3.1 percent.
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The latest revision of third quarter GDP finds the U.S. economy growing even faster than we'd thought this summer -- 3.1 percent.
The good news, according to Diane Swonk, chief economist as Mesirow Financial, is that consumers spent more than initially estimated last month, and there was more housing activity.
There is a downside as well, she adds.
"Investment -- that backbone of our future growth -- actually declined," explains Swonk. That means the underlying growth pattern going into the fourth quarter is fairly weak.
"We're at a fork in the road," she adds. "We could be going on a much stronger path, but that all depends on fiscal policy and the fiscal debate that's playing out right now in Washington."
We must remember that since the Wall Street banks have yet to pay the $600-800 billion in subprime fraud settlements that most financial analyst placed as needed to cover the fraudulent loans dumped on taxpayers, the economy is not any closer to settled. The delay in getting all of that money to states is delaying many of the recovery efforts across the country and the housing market stalled for years because of the failure of the banks to fork over the fraud.
One of the most noticeable affects of this delay in justice will be in the titling surrounding subprime mortgage fraud foreclosures. We all know those MERS babies are all titles without a certified owner and as such we are watching as pols and banks allow this corrupted titling system set the country up to decades of legal battles. All of this could be settled if the banks would pay what would be about $100 billion for each of the big banks!
