EconomicCrisis.US

‘This sucker’s going down” was George W Bush’s pithy description of the United States’ economy when the financial crisis of late 2008 threatened to bring down every bank on Wall Street.

Disaster was averted by concerted international cooperation of a sort never seen before and, by the middle of last year, the world’s biggest economy seemed to be on the mend. Factories started to hum again, shares rallied sharply and growth resumed.

The US seemed to be showing its traditional resilience. That judgment now appears premature. The latest US economic data has been poor. Traditionally, the US’s flexible labour market has meant job creation after recession has been robust. This time it was weak even when output was growing strongly in late 2009 and 2010. Recently, it went into reverse.
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Like many small businesses caught in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Tri-State Biodiesel was struggling to find capital last year in the middle of a credit crunch.

The Bronx, N.Y., company, which converts cooking-oil refuse from restaurants around New York City into fuel that it then sells, was in dire need of an equipment upgrade.

“Banks weren’t lending at all,” said Brent Baker, founder and chief executive. Baker said he went to three major commercial banks that had financed the company in the past. “Once the crisis hit, applications were suddenly more complicated and lengthy, and they all came back giving us all these euphemisms for ‘no.’”
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A series of key economic indicators Thursday hinted at a U.S. economy that’s still struggling to get back on its feet.

American sales of previously occupied homes fell in June and are expected to keep sinking, the National Association of Realtors said.

June sales fell 5.1 per cent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.37 million, the group said, a possible sign the U.S. housing market’s troubles are a drag on the economic recovery.

The median sale price was $183,700, up one per cent from a year earlier.
Jobless claims rise
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US President Barack Obama said he received a warning from billionaire investor Warren Buffet, who told him the United States is only 40 to 50 percent recovered from its withering recession.

While the president acknowledged the slow recovery and the challenge of regaining millions of lost jobs, he stressed to NBC News that the economy has stabilized and that Americans were ready to seize on “enormous opportunities.”

Obama was handed a major political victory Thursday when the US Senate approved the most sweeping overhaul of Wall Street rules since the Great Depression, but a day earlier he huddled with Buffet in a low-key meeting at the White House, where he heard the investor’s somber assessment.
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