The February ISM Manufacturing Survey somewhat recovered from last month's plunge. PMI rose by 1.9 percentage points to 53.2%. This range is really mediocre growth for manufacturing. New orders did rebound with a 3.3 percentage point increase. Yet production just completely imploded, the second month in a row. Many blame the unusually bad weather and freezing cold.
Q4 2013 real GDP was revised significantly downward from the original 3.2% to a weak, measly 2.4%. Personal consumption expenditures was revised down over half a percentage point of GDP. The original estimate for exports was also revised down over a quarter of a percentage point. If the Q4 downward revision in consumer spending isn't bad enough, for all of 2013 annual real GDP was just 1.9%. In 2012, annual GDP was 2.8%.
Recent comments