Who To Believe?

Tonight I watched a vaguely reassuring commentary on PBS’s evening news that said that the stock market had seen an upturn in the economy, and was responding with positive gains; the end of the recession was heavily implied. I then came across an AP report on Breitbart.com that reported the rest of the story:

“On Friday, a government report revealed more weakness in the economy, sending investors in search of safe-haven assets like Treasurys.
“The Commerce Department said the nation's gross domestic product, a measure of the economy's total output, fell at a slower-than-expected pace of 1 percent in the second quarter. But the revised first-quarter GDP contraction came in much lower, at 6.4 percent from 5.5 percent, the worst quarterly reading in nearly 30 years.”

“The report also said consumers cut spending by 1.2 percent in the second quarter, after a slight increase in the previous three-month period. The latest data suggesting a slow recovery helped draw money to bonds, which tend to do well in times of low inflation and muted economic growth”.

And,

“Investors also found some relief Friday in the fact that the Treasury's week of record auctions was over. The government issued more than $200 billion of new debt this week.”

$200 billion of new debt?? At a rate of every two weeks, that’s $5.2 Trillion per year. New Debt.

If we are going bankrupt, let’s borrow even more money. We can fix it all later with some therapeutic inflation. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Then at bloomberg.com, this:

"The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed."

Read the whole thing if you're interested in the figures. What I want to know is what it will look like the next time they revise the numbers.