economic indicators

Bad News for Economic Growth as Q2 2012 GDP is Revised Down to 1.25%

Q2 2012 real GDP now shows 1.25% annualized growth after revisions. The advance second quarter GDP estimate was 1.5%, whereas the second revision reported 1.7% GDP growth. The BEA rounds their final GDP numbers, so the actual GDP reported was 1.3%. When we're grabbing economic crumbs, 0.05 percentage points makes a difference.

 

 

What the Q2 GDP third estimate shows is a barely breathing economy. Businesses shed inventories, consumers spent way less, a dramatic swing from the Q2 GDP advance report and investment generally is down from the 1st quarter. Shedding inventories can be a recession indicator. Durable goods spending literally vanished in Q2, also a recession indicator. The drought showed up in Q2 GDP, negatively impacting farm inventories and potentially other GDP components indirectly.

Conference Board Leading Economic Indicators for August 2009

The Conference board has released their LEIs for August 2009. Their leading economic indicator index (LEI) is up 0.6% for August. July was 0.9% and June was 0.8% respectively.

"Since reaching a peak in July 2007, the LEI fell for twenty months – the longest downtrend since the mid 1970s – but it has been rising since April and its gains have become very widespread," says Ataman Ozyildirim, Economist at The Conference Board. "The six-month growth rate of the LEI continues to accelerate. At the same time, the downtrend in the coincident economic index, measuring current economic activity, seems to be stabilizing, with the index flat so far this quarter."

Krugman Defines a New Economic State - Purgatory

Good job Krugman. On George Stephanopoulos' show, Krugman amplified a much needed new term for the state of the economy, purgatory!

We've got a problem with terminology because we usually say either the economy is in recession or the economy is recovering.   Either you're in hell or you're in heaven.   And the trouble is we're actually in purgatory.   We're actually in a situation almost for sure GDP is growing; almost for sure the business cycle leading committee will eventually decide the recession ended this summer.   But almost surely also we're still losing jobs.   The unemployment rate is going to continue to rise.   So we're in that infamous jobless recovery state.