San José, CA – On Friday, October 26, the U.S. stock market fell again. The broadest measure of U.S. stocks, the S&P 500, which measures the prices of 500 of the largest corporations in the United States, fell 1.7%, ending the day below where it started the year in January. One of the hardest hit stocks was Amazon, which fell almost 8% on Friday, down nearly 20% since it hit a high in September, giving the corporation a market value of $1 trillion.
San José, CA – On Jan. 30, the Commerce Department reported that Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, fell by a very small amount (0.1% at an annual rate) in the last three months of 2012. The drop in GDP was largely because of a big drop in federal government purchases of goods and services, in addition to a drop in inventories (meaning that stores sold goods that were sitting on their shelves instead of having more produced) and a drop in exports.
The recession ain’t over yet, fears of a ‘double-dip’ rise
San José, CA – On July 29, the Commerce Department released its report on Gross Domestic Product or GDP for the Second Quarter (April to June) of 2011. GDP, which measures the value of goods and services produced in the United States, rose at only a 1.3% annual rate, much slower than most mainstream economists expected. Even worse, the First Quarter (January to March) economic growth was cut from an earlier estimate of 1.9% to just 0.4%.
