Casey Berry

January 30, 2009

8:45 am

United States Economy

In the year 2008, the U.S. produced $15 trillion worth of goods. When 2007 first started our economy took a turn for the worse, mainly because of the real estate market and some financial problems. By the time December 2007 got here the United States had entered a recession. Our last recession occurred in 2001, surprisingly that wasn’t a result of the terrorist attacks that occurred that year. According to the NY Times the recession in 2001 was a direct result of the “dot-com bubble” which started in early 2000. Over the past 30-40 years our economy has not had very many recessions. David Leonhardi said that the reason for the economy is the “new flexibility of business.” The companies now use computers and “better transportation” so they need fewer workers.

In my opinion I believe that those terrorist attacks in 2001 did affect our economy directly. I believe that’s when things really started going downhill. I think if companies would go back to running businesses like they use to they would have a higher demand for more employees. As far as the real estate market goes, people just simply can’t afford houses right now. Our society is so prone to debt that we get ourselves into a lot of trouble with money. Americans have this philosophy that they can charge anything to a card and then forget about it. If people don’t start really hustling to get ahead then they will be living on welfare and unemployment. Our generation is really going to have it tough, we will definitely have to work hard to get ahead in these horrible economic times.