During our second quarter, April-June, our economy grew only 1.3 percent, while the first quarter, January - March, was revised downward to 0.4 percent, weakest since the recession ended two years ago. Why is our economy in these doldrums?

It's a slowdown in business growth due to lack of investment by businesses who are keeping capital on the sidelines over economic uncertainty.Jobs, production/output and wages are always the first casulties with a knock-on effect of higher rates and inflation.A persistent decline in corporations' rate of profit and more importantly the current debt ceiling impasse are also important factors.Investors and Wall Street are shaky, the DOW and NASDAQ are on shifting sands and an over-spending government with a massive deficit to shake off - any of these factors will always have a huge negative impact on even a partially-recovering economy.