Los Angeles Times (09/30/13) Don Lee
The nation’s economy has been expanding for more than four years, but the recovery from the Great Recession has been repeatedly held back by political budget battles. Many analysts forecast that a two-week partial government shutdown would shave 0.3 to 0.4 of a percentage point from economic growth in the fourth quarter, mostly stemming from lost pay for hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers. Longer downtime likely would mean increasingly larger and escalating problems for the economy, including greater volatility in financial markets.