Winners and losers

Apparently at least some people have reason to be happy about the U.S.' current economic situation, as increased corporate profits have helped to boost the stock market:

U.S. stocks rallied on Friday, with the Dow and the Nasdaq each up 1 percent, as higher corporate profits, including those of bellwether Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), overshadowed a government report showing slower-than-expected economic growth...

Which is good news for those with substantial share investments. But what about, well, everybody else?

Official figures from the Commerce Department this afternoon showed US economic growth slowed to its weakest annual rate in three years.

Growth for the quarter was estimated at just 1.1 pct, well below the 4.1 pct recorded in the third quarter and expectations of a much more modest slowdown to 2.7 pct...

The Federal Reserve will nevertheless be concerned by evidence of core inflation heating up. The core personal consumption expenditure price index -- which excludes food and energy prices -- rose at an annual rate of 2.2 pct, above the Fed's 1-2 pct target range.

To sum up: Americans generally are paying more that expected to produce less...but as long as the end result is higher corporate profits, nobody's apparently complaining. Or at the very least, nobody with reason to complain seems to be able to find a major media platform to do so.