Q3 GDP Maintains Growth… The Recession Has To Wait
The news this morning is dominated by European bailout news, but we have a “recession watch” figure today. This morning was the Gross Domestic Product for the third quarter in the United States. This is the first preliminary report on…
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The headline GDP in the third quarter was +2.5%, slightly under the 2.7% projected by Dow Jones. This compares to +1.3% in Q2-2011 and to +0.4% in Q1-2011. If you look at the PCE Price Index, that came to +2.4%.
The third quarter was helped by consumer spending as consumers continued to spend. Real final sales, backing out private inventories was +3.6%.
We have seen several economists raise growth targets during the recent weeks despite a deluge of bad data and despite what had been awful news out of Europe, China, and India.
Could it be that there will be no double-dip recession? It seems possible now and maybe the soft landing is just growth so slow that it still feels like a recession because so many things have not improved. Housing and employment remain in the tank.
JON C. OGG
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Jon Ogg has been a financial news analyst since 1997. Mr. Ogg set up one of the first audio squawk box services for traders called TTN, which he sold in 2003. He has previously worked as a licensed broker to some of the top U.S. and E.U. financial institutions, managed capital, and has raised private capital at the seed and venture stage. He has lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as New York and Chicago, and he now lives in Houston, Texas. Jon received a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance at University of Houston in 1992. www.247wallst.com.
