The Commerce Department reported that the nation's economy grew at a

This one is fun, huh?


Yup, it's from the OG! I occasionally hallucinate things in the OGs, but Bunuel verified it, and he does not make mistakes. (Also: mosquitos refuse to bite him, just out of respect. And the last time he went to Spain, he chased the bulls.)


I see what you did there! Nicely played, MikeScarn.

The second "that" might feel a little bit unnecessary, but it's there to emphasize the parallelism:

"The Commerce Department reported that the nation's economy grew at a brisk annual pace of 3.7 percent in the second quarter, but that while businesses were expanding their production, unsold goods piled up on store shelves..."

So the Commerce Department reported two things: (1) "that the nation's economy grew..." and (2) "that while businesses were expanding their production, unsold goods piled up on store shelves..." So the word "that" just subordinates the two clauses, and clarifies that both clauses are things that "the Commerce Department reported." Fair enough. (More on "that" in this article and this video.)


Yeah, the "with" thing is tricky. Let's go through all of the answer choices, just to be safe.


The verb tenses make no sense here. Businesses "were expanding" (past progressive tense, if you like jargon -- basically, an ongoing action in the past), but then consumer spending "is slowed sharply" (present tense). There's no good reason to mix those tenses here. (A) is out.


I have no problem with this. It's all in past tense: "business were expanding their production", "unsold goods were piling up", and "consumer spending slowed." That actually makes sense.

Let's keep (B).


The verb tense doesn't work in (C), for starters. The past perfect tense "had piled up" must describe an action that logically occurs before something else in the past. And that just doesn't work here: the action "unsold goods had piled up on store shelves" doesn't happen before "business were expanding their production." That's enough to eliminate (C).

The "with" is also goofy, but I'll say more about that in (D), since that one has attracted more questions.


Maybe I'm missing something, but I can think of two major uses of the word "with":

1. To indicate that one thing or person is accompanied by another: "Tim went with Ron to see a nine-hour documentary about weiner dogs."
2. To modify or describe an action: "Milena ate an entire pizza with great enthusiasm." The phrase "with great enthusiasm" just describes the action, "Mila ate."

The problem with (D) is that neither usage of "with" really applies here. It makes no sense to say that spending was slowing accompanied by "the piling up of unsold goods," the way Tim was accompanied by Ron. And it's not logical for "the piling up of unsold goods" to describe the slowing spending.

Contrast this with (B), in which "as" indicates that the slowing of spending and the piling up of goods are happening at the same time. This is perfectly logical, and much, much clearer.

So given the choice between (D) and (B), (B) wins.


Welp, (E) has the same "with" problem as (D). Also, the verb tense still doesn't make a whole lot of sense: "has slowed" indicates an action that starts in the past but continues in the present, but then the non-underlined portion of the sentence is still in the past. It's not necessarily a crime to mix verb tenses, but in this case, there's no good reason to do it.

So (B) is the best we can do.