Is the universe expanding now as fast. It did during the first seconds of the big bang?

accorinding to inflationary theory no

the universe expanded exponentially fast, slowed down, and now is expanding at an accelerating rate

shit ask the universe. to the source nigguh

Perhaps the universe expands at it's fastest from the big bang then slows down as time goes on from the force of gravity until eventually it all ends up back in one black hole like thing then big bangs again.

This was once thought to be plausible, but observation tells us that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This is why dark matter exists in scientific theory, as a sort of repulsive force to match matters' attractive force (gravity) to explain how the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. In a hypothetical universe without dark matter this would be the case, so not a bad idea.

OK, so nothing can move faster than the speed of light. But the Universe did just that in the first nano seconds. Along came the theory of "inflation" to explain this without violating that law. After the inflation, the expansion was still no faster than the speed of light and never will be.

So simply said, No the universe is not expanding as fast as it did during the first few seconds, because clearly it is only expanding at the speed of light at best right now.

the universe is expanding faster than light and is accelerating as we speak

???

That's a bit of a stretch.

Distant bodies, particles and photons loose momentum as they travel to unoccupied areas of the universe.

iso validation of the accelerated expansion.

its well established that the universe is expanding faster than light

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light#Universal_expansion

nn wikipedia crap. Perhaps I should be clearer. iso recent peer-reviewed articles on the subject. Just to be clear, Scientific American is not peer-reviewed. Thx for your interest.