if the fed is going to step in and takeac, there's a sense many people might be thinking mable the economy is much worse off than we thought. what kind of shape is the economy in from your perspective? i think the mediocre at best. let's put it that way. it looks like we're stuck in a two percent growth rut give or take a little. the first half under two percent, and the second half over two percent. that's not good performance when you have an unemployment rate of 8.2%. the fed is concerned about that, and all of that is assuming this two percent rut, assuming europe doesn't blow sky high, and we don't fall off the fiscal cliff. if either of those happen, we could do a lot worse. >> susie: all right. well, a lot of ifs. alan, thank you for coming in and explaining it. we appreciate t. alan blinder of princeton university and former vice chair of the federal reserve. >> tom: while we wait for the data on the u.s. economy in the second quarter, britain today reported it continued to be in recession during the second quarter. the u.k.'s economy took a bigger hit than expected this spring, fa