Profits have fallen for five straight quarters, with the Q4 (so far) trough now showing a contraction of 11.2% year-over-year. Second quarter 2016 GDP was revised slightly lower, from about 1.21% to just 1.09%, as real GDP has averaged now only 0.93% over the past three quarters, and approximately 1.7% on average over the past seven quarters.
Equities have risen in large part because of historically low interest rates around the world. Investors have little choice for yield and corporations have invested in their own stock to engineer their earnings per share.
The Democrats love to remind us that Wallstreet and Main Street are different worlds and that Republicans caused the Great Recession. By the same token, the Democrats have presided over this weakest recovery and the income equality that has resulted these past 7+ years. But how can either party claim they have the answers?
The problem is both parties. The problem is that we have two parties, which monopolize government, and don't show any willingness to work together, or worse. They actually undermine one another and the best interests of our Nation in order to achieve their party's self-interests.
Any hope and promise for the future offered by either political party is canceled out by the other. We are locked in battle that has arrested economic growth and prosperity and stymied business investment.
Can't you see that the solution is neither a Republican one or a Democratic one? The answer is to break the strangle hold which two-party politics has on America. A third party is the best hope our Nation has to force politicians to find and implement solutions, to dismantle the hold which lobbyists and special interests have on Washington and that Washington has on the States. We need to reduce the size of the Federal government and take away the motivation life long politicians have to pander rather than do the right thing by having term limits.
The answer can't be Democratic or Republican because that is voting for more of the same. The only sane solution is Johnson & Weld.
