Good news! I hope it wasn't reported by the same government people who reported about how many jobs were created with the stimulus money.
It probably grew due to cash for clunkers... And the ending of the home purchase credit probably spawned some home goods purchases.
So we're borrowing stilts to prop up the economy? Pretty soon we're going to have to give the stilts back. This is going to be a slow, painful, jobless recovery. If you analyze the natural rate of unemployment in countries with socialized countries, it's always several percentage points higher than capitalist systems. We're moving from a natural rate of 4.5%-5.5% to somewhere around 7%-9%. But luckily, we have guv'mint to save us!
It technically ends the recession. A recession literally being 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. It really sucks that the recession was extended for the sake of "never crisis go to waste" to push through outrageous spending and to justify enormous deficits. There's another more main street definition of recession: "when your neighbor is unemployed, it's a recession; when you're unemployed it's a depression." It's still one hell of a recession.
