Going through various economic and social factors of why Prudential should invest in various countries reminds me to look at how we are doing here in the U.S. As we have learned, economies are interrelated and it’s tough to analyze US on its own, but looking over the first quarter results, economy is worse than everybody else has thought. We already feel the increase in the oil prices resulting from the crisis in the Middle East, and realize for the foreseeable future, oil will continue to be the lifeblood of the US and the global economy.

The Commerce Department revised its estimates of first-quarter GDP to show that the economy contracted at a 2.9 percent annual rate. A combination of shrinking business inventories, terrible winter weather and a surprise contraction in health care spending drove the first-quarter decline, which is the worst since the first quarter of 2009, when the economy shrank at a 5.4 percent rate. Below is a link to a short article that has further details.

Erol Menda