(click the images, as always, to enlarge)
The report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis is here:
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 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent.
The pathetic performance is being hailed as good news. It is, like when the guy with the drill stops boring holes in your head, but only good relative to the first awful estimate.
This final revision is a huge revision up from the first estimate of -0.1% and the second of +0.1%. Suddenly growth in the 4th quarter is 4 times better than it was just a month ago. Yet even at that these are remarkable depths for US GDP to be in when the recession is supposed to be long over since 2009.
Speaking of which, it was said by Ben Bernanke back then, here in July 2009, that growth of 2.5% was necessary to keep the unemployment rate constant. So why is unemployment coming down? Even after today we still have growth roundable to zero in Q4, but the unemployment numbers magically came down anyway, from 8.1% last August to 7.7% in February 2013. If weak GDP is having a long term affect on unemployment, I don't see it. Even today's annual averages in the 1.8% and 2.2% range in the report for the last two years do not support Bernanke's assertion in 2009. Unemployment has come down despite such anemic growth rates. And if anything, we should have seen a gradual uptick in unemployment over the last two years because GDP has been insufficient to keep it constant. I don't think Bernanke really knows what he's talking about, and just makes this stuff up to mollify people at the time as he pursues his only real goal: keeping the banks afloat. Everything else is just for public consumption.
And you can put that in your Easter basket, and crack it.
And you can put that in your Easter basket, and crack it.
