The White House has been quite optimistic with their projections regarding the recovery even if several indicators seem to point otherwise. Still, director of the President’s National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, said that other signs are confirming positive predictions.
In an address to the Economic Club of Washington, Summers said “There has been a substantial anecdotal flow over the last six to eight weeks of things that felt a little bit better. The sense of a ball falling off a table, which is what the economy has felt like since the middle of last fall … we can be reasonably confident that that is going to end within the next few months and we will no longer have that sense of a free-fall.”
Still, Summer offers no concrete figures on how hard problems will continue to hit before this “free-fall” ceases and things start to go upward. Unemployment rates have soared to double-digits and the millions of unemployed Americans doubt economists’ predictions of an upturn anytime soon.
Right now, the gross domestic product should be growing 2.5% just to maintain the unemployment status quo. Anything less and job cuts are sure to come again. Fourth quarter of 2008 plunged to 6.3% causing massive job cuts across industries.
Source: MSNBC
