According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), real GDP is finally just above the pre-recession peak. The estimate for real GDP in Q3 (2005 dollars) was $13,352.8 billion, 0.2% above the $13,326.0 billion in Q4 2007. Nominal GDP was reported as $15,198.6 billion in Q3 2011.After nearly four years, the economy is finally back to where it was in late 2007. Sadly, the population is larger, the number of potential workers is larger, but the actual number of workers is smaller. While the total income of the whole population has recovered, the amount going to the bottom 99% is still less than what it was in 2007. The top 1% keep hoovering up any loose dollars and pocketing them which they, in their role of "job creators", then use increase their bank accounts and not create new jobs despite all the propaganda of the Republican ideologues.
As you can see, it is investment in equipment & software that is the engine of the recovery, not construction:
Here is the bad news and the reason why the OWS movement is growing:
Among his many shortcomings, the fact that Obama has failed to seriously address the housing crisis has made this Great Recession linger longer and deeper than it needed to have been. A great deal of needless suffering has been shouldered by the 99% because Obama refused to force the banks to swallow the costs of their bad decisions. Instead the bankers got to keep their big bonuses and nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer dollars has gone to prop up the big Wall Street banks while 25 million are unemployed and 10 million have lost their homes. That is "economic justice" for the 1% but not for the 99%.
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