Monday, October 7, 2013

Even Without A Default, Goldman Sachs States Shutdown Reduces 4th Quarter GDP By 0.2% Every Week It Lasts

"The GOP Is No Longer The Party Of Business" is the title of Joshua Green's article in Bloomberg Business.  And that was written before Speaker Boehner's remarks on Sunday that increase the risks of a default becoming a reality.

Not including the unmeasurable damage that could result from a default, Green writes the following about just the government shutdown's costs to the economy:

"An Oct. 2 Goldman Sachs (GS) report estimates that growth will be reduced on an annualized basis by 0.2 percentage points a week, meaning if the government were to remain closed for five weeks, fourth-quarter estimates of U.S. economic health would fall by a full point."
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-03/republicans-are-no-longer-the-party-of-business#p1


Green continues to expand on the damage done to the US economy by the radicalized GOP that the US Chamber of Commerce has done more to birth than anyone:

"Over the past several years the series of budget crises engineered by Republicans to extract concessions from Democrats has damaged economic growth by reducing spending and increasing uncertainty. “We estimate that fiscal drag from federal government policies was 1 percent last year and 1.8 percent this year,” says Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist for Barclays (BCS). “We do believe that there has been an effect on both investment spending and hiring the past few years because of the uncertainty over the events in Washington.”

The radicalized GOP cares not about any of the foregoing and is no longer listening to its business patrons like the US Chamber of Commerce. That is truly scary or should be.

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