PISCATAWAY, N.J. (AP) — President Barack Obama on Sunday urged college graduates to shun those who want to confront a rapidly changing world by building walls around the United States or by embracing ignorance, as he delivered a sharp and barely concealed critique of Donald Trump.
Obama used his commencement speech at Rutgers University to illustrate a world view antithetical to the ideas espoused by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Looking out at a sea of red and black gowns, Obama told the roughly 12,000 graduating students that the pace of change on the planet is accelerating, not subsiding, and that recent history had proved that the toughest challenges cannot be solved in isolation.
With an overload of disparate data, headlines alarmingly assert that the economy is headed for a recession in 2016. Given the severity and duration of the last downturn, how might Massachusetts fare this time?
Technically, The Great Recession of 2007-2009 ended on June 30, 2009. But quantitative evidence feeds negative qualitative sentiments — many don't feel that the economy ever recovered from seven years ago, in spite of anemic growth. The U.S. economy has not grown above 3 percent for a decade; from 2006 to 2015 it has grown at an average rate of 1.41 percent (the slowest rate of growth in a 10-year period since 1930-1939). The sound of today's activity is barely audible compared to the roar of the post-World War II period (1947-2004), when growth averaged 3.45 percent each year.
