Third-quarter GDP report is a big lump of coal
Another economic report, another downward revision to growth numbers once trumpeted as the sign that happy days were here again:
Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the third quarter of 2011 … according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 1.3 percent.
The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 2.0 percent ….
And in the first estimate, the increase in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) GDP was 2.5 percent. Which means growth in the third quarter was much closer to the paltry rate we saw from April to June — well under the long-term trend rate of about 2.75 percent — than the encouraging, near-trend rate initially thought.
Consumer spending in the quarter was disappointing. So were corporate profits: After a banner year in 2010 that helped to fuel the anti-corporate protests this year, they’re on pace to grow more slowly than in even that dismal, recessionary year, 2009.
We can hope that the fourth quarter will have been better: The job-market numbers have at least shown some signs of firming up, though not of taking off. But as things stand, July to September represented the second straight quarter in which year-on-year growth was less than 2 percent. Research by the Federal Reserve indicates a 70 percent chance of a recession after even one quarter in which that’s the case.
Just in case you’ve waited until the last minute to put in your requests to Santa.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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102 comments Add your comment
Julius Perving
December 22nd, 2011
10:46 pm
Lil’ Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
December 22nd, 2011
6:26 pm
Why are poor folks having babies they can’t pay for?
Oh, right, they know they can vote Democrat and have someone else pay their bills for them.
Don’t be a child. Poor whites who do vote will almost certainly vote Republican. Poor blacks will likely not vote, period.
People like you have long said “if you can’t afford a baby, don’t have one,” but that does nothing to actually prevent births into poverty, it’s just reactionary, partisan drivel. Plus, you actively want to prevent them from being taught any sex ed but abstinence (a proven failure), you don’t like the idea of free condoms for teens, and obviously you’re anti-abortion. So you are setting them up to fail.
The core psychology of your argument is a struggle for control; i.e., you still innately want to control women because you’re a man and they should obey you. Patriarchy at its finest. You lack fundamental compassion for others–the irony of which is that you probably consider yourself “a good Christian.”
Lee
December 23rd, 2011
11:10 am
You think these number are bad, just wait until the effects of the OBAMA EPA rules regarding mercury emissions of power plants take effect. http://www.ajc.com/business/epa-issues-mercury-reduction-1267220.html