No, its done in purchasing power parity (i cant be bothered to fully explain, but it basically makes living costs and fluctuations in most things invalid) and france is now ahead of the uk.

I thought you were referring to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

Because I've had a few people point out that we've fallen below France on that thing, so I'm used to explaining why.

I thought we were always lower PPP, mind you.

Thanks Montana for sticking up for me.

The Economy crashed because the US Housing Market crashed, Thanks to the US employing a social program. The rest of the world crashed based on how closely they were tied to the US market. The closer you were tied, the more you crashed.

France and Germany were not as closely tied to out market then others (like the UK). As mentioned above, Australia didn't even have a recession, and they are one of the most capitalistic countries in the world.

How you can tie this recover into Capitalism vs Socialism is beyond me. How you can say Socialism works when ever sense the recession started, the US as acted more socialist then any country in the world, with an unbelievable poring of money into our economy by government with zero effect on the economy, is laughable.

You can't compare it, because for the last 2 years, nothing about the US economy is been Capitalism. I have said all along, if you let Capitalism work, we would have been on the path to recovery a long time ago. We never did that.

It's a better argument that the US has not gotten out of this, that Socialism doesn't work, then Capitalism.

No, we were ahead in both of these measurements, but now we are behind! I guess it doesnt matter that much when our economy kick starts again and we overtake france (not gonna happen till at least another 3 years mind you)

Is that hyperbole?

In terms of bailout money/ country GDP then yes, i think?
but in other ways?

Yes.

The government now owns two out of the three major automotive companies. They have a pay czar that tells banks what they are allowed to pay employees. They have a car czar that gives money to the people to buy cars. They say what companies can live or die. They even have the power now (or requested it, not sure if it passed) to kill a company who is doing well, if they think it’s too big. They all but own the banking industry.

Think about it this way. If every decision about the economy that the government made, were first though if in terms of “what would a capitalist do?” and then “what would a socialist do?”, every choice made, is what a socialist would do.

If we ran this country in a capitalist way, it would look very different today. AIG would have filed bankruptcy,  Chrysler and GM would have zero shares owned by Washington, Many more banks would have gone under, leaving room for the banks with proper business practices to thrive in the new market. All the jobs we are going to lose we would have lost in just a few months (meaning we would have crashed hard and fast), and we would today be rapidly recovering.

Instead, we are dying slowly, with a VERY slow recovery in our future and trillions more in debt.

There is absolutely no way you can look at what the US did, and then say Capitalism doesn’t work. First, you have to try it.

From what I read, the main cause for the 0.3% GDP improvement was declining imports (which are counted negatively for GDP).

Not really an improvement of France/Germany's situation, in fact it shows weakness in the market for imported products.

This is also the case for Portugal btw. It does make a nice stat for the prime minister to quote before the upcoming elections, though ;)

good news for the French and the Germans then, hopefully the UK will join them soon.