The U.S. Department of Commerce reported this week that the economy grew by about 5 percent from July to September, though it is expected to fall back sharply in the early Fall. The economy's growth in October through December is expected to have slowed to a pace of just 1.5 percent or less. Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States. The big worry is that individuals will cut back on their spending and throw the economy into a recession. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and others say the odds of that happening have grown this year. Greenspan recently warned that the economy is ``getting close to stall speed.'' To rescue the economy, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues have sliced a key interest rate three times this year; those moves dropped that key rate down to 4.25 percent, a two-year low. Still, Bernanke has been criticized for not moving more quickly and aggressively to deal with the problems. The collapse of the once high flying housing market, a mortgage meltdown and a painful credit crunch, have propelled home foreclosures to record numbers. The problems have forced banks and other financial companies to rack up multibillion-dollar losses, have unnerved Wall Street and have the Bush administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress accusing each other of not doing enough to stem the crisis and scrambling for solutions to curb the fallout.
