Three weeks from today, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis is going to release its advance estimate of third-quarter gross domestic product. The current thinking of most several two of the economic forecasters whose stuff I read–sure to be bolstered by the better-than-expected June sales numbers being reported by many retailers–is that real GDP growth for the quarter will come in at a 3% annualized pace.
That’s not what you’d call a recessionary trajectory. It’s reasonably healthy growth. It’s also probably just an artifact of the tax rebates sent out over the past couple of months. Most of those forecasters whose stuff I read think third-quarter growth will be much lower, possibly zero (the first-quarter figure this year was 1%; the fourth quarter of last year 0.6%). But I’ll be very curious to see how the media, and the markets, and the politicians, react to the GDP news when it comes out. Because people really aren’t in a 3% growth mindset at the moment.
Update: Commenter Memekiller wonders who the heck these “economic forecasters whose stuff I read” are. To be honest, what I was thinking of was the mainly the excellent reports of Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics, who has been on top of this slowdown from day one and who shocked me a few days ago by projecting that second-quarter growth could hit 3%. Then I read the other day that Macroeconomic Advisers, another highly respected group, had upped their forecast to 3%. But I wrote this post on my laptop outside of the office; when I got in and actually started looking through the economic reports I’ve received in recent days, I realized I had dramatically overstated things. Here’s a rundown of the second-quarter GDP growth forecasts I could find:
Ian Shepherdson, High Frequency Economics, 2.5-3%
Ethan Harris & Co., Lehman Brothers, 1%
Jan Hatzius & Co., Goldman Sachs, 2%
Richard Berner & Co., Morgan Stanley, 1.7%
Maury Harris & Co., UBS, 0%
Kathleen Stephansen & Co., Credit Suisse, 1.9%
Kurt Karl, Swiss Re, 1.4%
Then there’s David Rosenberg at Merrill, who keeps saying that all of these GDP numbers are going to get revised dramatically downward in a couple of years when they’ve got more complete data. If he’s right, this whole discussion is semi-nonsensical anyway.