Bloomberg (08/26/13) Kasia Klimasinska; Shobhana Chandra

The U.S. economy is doing much better, five years after the Great Recession. The country is handling federal budget cuts and higher payroll taxes, the economy is growing, and some economists are forecasting that the expansion may last longer than most. Businesses are hiring and investing, households are spending, home sales are picking up, and the automotive sector is robust.

“We are in a much better place than we were five years ago,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, PA. “Consumers are feeling much, much better; certainly investors are.”