The U.S. economy has been terrible since 2006. Yes, the official recession began in 2007 but property values, which led to the recession, began to decline in mid 2006. While gross domestic product or GDP began to show some growth this year and thus ending the recession, this growth has been revised downward several times. This illustrates just how poor the economy has been performing and unemployment has never recovered despite some anemic growth on the part of the overall economy. The fact is that the economy is still faltering, official unemployment rates are at 9.6% while the real unemployment rate is more likely around 13-14% if one considers those who are no longer officially searching for employment or are underemployed to some degree. The outcome is that the U.S. economy is suffering from two very serious issues: 1) high unemployment and 2) declining and persistently low property values. The effect is that even if U.S. firms begin to increase productivity and output and achieve some degree of sales growth, U.S. consumers are not part of the recovery because they have no money to spend and U.S. firms are benefiting from improved operating efficiencies which allow them to increase production without hiring. In essence, no jobs equals no true economic recovery. With declining property values the consumer has no structural source of capital to spend and invest in America and cannot count on the government for any real type of assistance. The consumer in the U.S. is on his or her own this time around. This is why we have a real sense of pride in our services here at Customwrittenbusinessplans.com. That is, we believe the only way the consumer is going to recover is one starts one’s own business enterprise and takes control of his or her own destiny. For many people, the only income they are going to receive in the near to mid-term is going to be income that they can generate themselves. Many of the jobs lost over the past four years are never coming back to the U.S. at all.
