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Showing posts from May, 2011

Anemic GDP Statistics: This Is "Recovery?"

John Crudele has a scathing column in Tuesdays NY Post, which has information not widely reported. "The government said the GDP in the first quarter grew at an "annualized" rate of 1.8 percent. That means you have to divide the 1.8 percent annualized rate by four quarters to see how much the economy really grew in the first three months of the year. The answer? A puny 0.45 percent." He goes further: "The problem is, the economy wasn't just slow in the first quarter. The last three months of 2010 were worse if you know how to read the figures. Here's what you have to understand for any of this to make sense. The GDP numbers reported by the Commerce Department are derived after inflation is deducted from overall output. So, that 1.8 percent annualized first quarter growth was what was left after inflation of 1.9 percent was removed. (Yes, inflation is probably worse than 1.9 percent but that's for another column.) The much better 3.1 percent annuali