April 2011 Macro Pulse -- The “Gulliver” Economy

Gulliver was a character in a Jonathan Swift novel who, when washed ashore after being shipwrecked, awoke on the beach only to discover that the island’s diminutive inhabitants, the Lilliputians, had tethered him to the ground. Gulliver is a fitting metaphor for the U.S. economy: it survived a “shipwreck” of a recession but numerous risk factors now constrain it from achieving full recovery and could tip it back into recession. Like the Lilliputians’ ropes that kept Gulliver prostrate in the sand, any one of those risk factors could hardly prevent the economy from rising to its feet; collectively, however, they prove a formidable restraint. Some of those risk factors include….


Click here to read the entire April 2011 Macro Pulse recap.

The Macro Pulse blog is a commentary about recent economic developments that affect the forest products industry. That commentary provides context for our 24-month forecast, which is contained in the monthly Economic Outlook newsletter available through Forest2Market. The monthly Macro Pulse newsletter summarizes the previous 30 days of commentary available on this website.