Weekly Wrap: U.S. GDP and immunity from a Europe crisis
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Weekly Wrap: U.S. GDP and immunity from a Europe crisis
Marketplace New York bureau chief Heidi Moore and Reuters’ Felix Salmon dissect this week’s news from Wall Street and beyond.
On the 2.2. percent GDP growth:
Felix Salmon: Is it good enough? It’s positive, which is more than you can say about the U.K., where I came from. We just tipped back into recession, we Brits. So compared to that, it looks great I think what’s clear is that it’s above what Larry Summers used to call ‘stall speed’ — we’re not worrying right now about a double-dip recession or going back to a second recession. So it’s worst case scenario, we’re still quite a long way away, but of course, we’d all love it to be much higher.
On whether the U.S. economy can withstand a European debt crisis:
Heidi Moore: It’s almost like a scene from “The Matrix,” it’s sort of freeze motion and then they start thinking they have more agency and power for the situation than they really do. Yeah, we have seen this coming for two years, and it’s intensifying, but it’s intensifying so creakingly slowly that it’s almost imperceptible. But for instance, with all due respect to Sec. Geithner, if you look at Moody’s, they are currently considering downgraded over 100 banks in the U.S., in Europe, almost everywhere in the world — on the basis of what could happen in a European debt crisis. You cannot fool yourselves — you cannot insulate yourself against a panic.
For more analysis, listen to the audio above.
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