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Bailouts and meltdowns: what's ahead for Montana's economy?

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High energy prices, mortgage foreclosures, bank failures, and the collapse of Wall Street have launched the U.S. economy into a state of chaos and confusion. Yes, much has happened since the Bureau of Business and Economic Research released a very optimistic forecast for the Montana economy back in February. For our midyear forecast released in July, we did our best to assess and incorporate all of the happenings in the national and global economies in the first six months of 2008. Since that time, major events--particularly on Wall Street--have burst into the news. So the question people are asking is: What's ahead for the Montana economy?

It helps to construct a timeline and to understand as best we can where the economy stands today. It also helps to look at how the economy has actually performed over the most recent months--compared to how we thought it was going to perform when we made our first forecast at the beginning of the year.

In many respects, the U.S. economy has done a lot better than many thought it would. The economy has continued to grow over the first half of 2008, although that growth has...

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