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Business Cycles

The Business Cycle is identified by four different phases; Expansion, Peak, Contraction, & Trough.

Based on the national summary report from October 2017, the U.S. economy is in the expansion phase, to my understanding. By definition if the GDP grows by 3% technically there is an expansion which happen in the third quarter of 2017. The national summary spoke of growth in areas such as retail, transportation, wages and real estate using the words increased moderately to describe current change in the economy. I'm not sure if I can agree with this all the way, but based on what has been reported in the national summary and digging through the internet to find the percent change in GDP I assume its correct. My first thought of what phase the U.S. is in was contraction. It seems like there has been many layoffs within business as well as business going bankrupt nation wide. Maybe those individual cases are not that big of an impact, but it's hard to be convinced that the U.S. is in a period of expansion.

Another reason I do not believe we are in an expansion is due to the hurricanes. The national summary report does mention hurricane Harvey as well as Irma and its effects on industries. However, the report still reflects an overall increase. To me it seems like this is a matter of what the numbers say verses what the actual reality is when you look around.