Article, CNN.com, November 2004
http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/25/news/economy/worry/index.htm In October, the Labor Department reported a large gain in jobs, which sparked a lot of positive forecasts on the state of the U.S. economy. Things got even better after the presidential election, when the stock market saw a jump.
Unfortunately, however, there are still some key economic indicators that keep experts from dancing in the streets. The dollar is steadily weakening, causing the price of imports to go up. A weakened dollar could lead to inflation, which could lead the Fed to retaliate by raising interest rates. The price of oil is still rising as well, which hurts the pocketbook of almost everyone.
In this article from CNN, many experts were asked what to make of these opposing forces in our economy. In general, they responded by saying that the economy is doing relatively well, but that it is still rather benign. Much of the bad outweighs the good, but we're doing no worse than last year.
There is some good news that comes out of this generally lukewarm sentiment. Experts agreed that employers may have suspended hiring until the presidential election was over, because they were worried about potential tax hikes. Now that the election is over, and tax hikes are deemed unlikely, experts forecast steady job growth.
