KeithHennessey.com

Real GDP shrank at a 1.0 percent annual rate in the second quarter of this year.

GDP shrank at a 5.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter of this year. I find it useful to understand how the major components of GDP are performing, and this graph allows me to do that. Let’s hope the Q2 numbers are less bad. Whatever the results, they will be largely independent of the stimulus, which is having only a small positive effect even now. The scary scenario is the one where the labor market continues to decline, and that causes consumption to go negative before the other sectors have time to recover.

Why does the President not say “climate change?” Will the House cap-and-trade bill create millions of new jobs in America — jobs that can’t be shipped overseas? Will the nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy lead the 21st century’s global economy? Who really pays for a cap-and-trade bill?