Third quarter GDP growth revised down to 2.2% | Business

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has just released its third try at estimating third-quarter GDP. It’s now been ratcheted down to 2.2%—from 2.8% in the estimate released a month ago and 3.5% in the original estimate. The culprit:

downward revisions to nonresidential fixed investment, to private inventory investment, and to personal consumption expenditures.

It just goes to show you can’t believe what you read in a GDP release. In fact, even the “third estimate” of third quarter GDP (the BEA used to call it the “final” estimate until they realized that was silly) will continue to be revised in the years to come.

None of this is stopping economists from speculating about fourth-quarter GDP. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, lots of forecasters have been revising their estimates of fourth-quarter growth northwards of 4%. On Jan. 30 the first BEA estimate will come out—after which, of course, the government’s statisticians will start revising it downwards or upwards.

What’s the takeaway here? We’re in an economic recovery, but we still don’t know how strong it is or how sustained it will be. Which you surely could have told me before today’s GDP release.

Stocks Rally Further in Run-up to EU Summit

MOSCOW — Global stocks enjoyed one of their best days in weeks on Tuesday ahead of a summit of European leaders that’s expected to be dominated by calls to boost economic growth.

Europe remains the focus of attention across all financial markets in the run-up to the June 17 Greek election that could go a long way to determining the country’s membership of the euro as well as the future of the single currency zone.

tanboontee

Some people have been real good in playing with numbers, offering all sorts of explanations (more often lame excuses) to whatever numbers that happen to have gone wrong.

As I have always said, one should not believe in numbers blindly or naively, even though they may come from the so-called experts.

Looks like the Curious Capitalist website is closing down soon for whatever reason there may be. However what I said would still hold for all websites and printed materials.

Farewell. Goodbye.

(btt1943)
http://patriotpublishing.wordpress.com patriotpublishing

Just curious, when have we downplayed growth in the past by repeatedly calling it a “recovery”? This is all language manipulation because President Obama doesn’t want to lose the power of the “recession” as a fear motivator for enacting his policies. The way that people were talking a year ago you’d think that economic growth would have never been on the horizon, yet, here it is! Additionally, “recovery” is so ambiguous; who will decide when the recovery is over? How many more stimulus bills and trillions of dollars will the Democrats blow before they decide the recovery is over? Give me a break.