Stimulus checks mean it’s your patriotic duty to shop!

Per a news service release from the University of North Texas, Terry Clower, an associate professor of applied economics and associate > director of the Center for Economic Development and Research, says the 1Q estimate of a 0.6 percent gain for GDP will certainly be revised downward to show that the U.S. economy “is treading water, at best, but may very well have slipped into negative growth late in 2007.”

“Increasing job losses, household budgets stressed by rapidly rising gasoline and food prices, the continuing effect of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, weak housing markets, and concerned consumers offer a litany of negative pressures on the national economy. Moreover, even if the economy is still growing slowly, it is not growing fast enough to sustain current employment.”

Clower said that because of technological change “that makes our labor > force increasingly productive,” the U.S. economy needs to grow by about 1.6 percent on an annualized basis just to support current employment levels.

Hell, we haven’t done that during most of the Bush Administration.

Prof. Clower is also just a BIT cynical about a possible BushCo message that will follow mailing of the “stimulus” checks.

He says that Americans should not be surprised if one or more government officials “tell us over the next several weeks that it is our patriotic duty to go out and spend, just as we saw after the attacks of 9-11.”

Sacrilege, Prof. Clower! Mon Dieu!