Word: gdp
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Officials admit they do not have a handle on the full scope of the problem (a 1996 estimate from the International Monetary Fund said money-laundering accounts for 2%-5% of global GDP) but it's certainly many billions every year...
...drowning in red ink. Twenty of the European Union's 27 members are running deficits to ease their way through the global recession, with the average pegged at 7.5% this year. Three years ago, the E.U.'s deficit average was just 0.8% of the bloc's total GDP. That figure increased to 2.3% in 2008 and then spiked to 6.9% last year. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...Perhaps the worst part, however, is that deficits have risen the fastest in the euro-zone group, which requires members to limit their budget shortfalls to 3% of GDP. Many of these countries began exceeding that threshold before the financial crisis began and then went well above it after the crash. E.U. countries collectively spent $1.5 billion to save their vulnerable banking sectors and a further $200 billion in stimulus funding to revive their economies. Although the latter helped the 16-nation euro zone exit the recession in the middle of 2009, it also lifted already lofty deficit levels even...
...thing is, I already ignore all these (relatively minor) indicators. I had been hoping to learn I could skip GDP or the employment report. I should have known that professional forecasters wouldn't forgo real data. As Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com put it in an e-mail, "I cherish all economic indicators...
...Consider GDP. In October, the Commerce Department announced - to rejoicing in the media, on Wall Street and in the White House - that the economy had grown at a 3.5% annual pace in the third quarter. By late December, GDP had been revised downward to a less impressive 2.2%, and revisions to come could ratchet it down even more (or revise it back up). The first fourth-quarter GDP estimate comes out Jan. 29. Some are saying it could top 5%. If it does, should we really believe...