While everyone was fixated on Supreme Court rulings involving homosexuality, the third and final report of GDP for Q1 2013 got buried in the avalanche. A good place for it, too, seeing how bad it was.
The BEA reported 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 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2013 (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 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, real GDP increased 2.4 percent. With the third estimate for the first quarter, the increase in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) was less than previously estimated, and exports and imports are now estimated to have declined (for more information, see "Revisions" on page 3).
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Poor growth is entirely apropos to the situation. Preoccupied by our own narcissism, we aren't PRODUCING.
