April 30, 2010
This is in the preemptive strike category. It seems from initial reports that no one bothered to notice that half of this quarter’s GDP growth (1.6 percentage points) was driven by inventory accumulation. If we pull out inventories, final demand grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate, almost exactly the same as the 1.7 percent rate in the 4th quarter of 2009 and the 1.5 percent rate in the 3rd quarter of 2009.
In other words, we are still looking at a very weak economy; one far weaker than would be expected coming out of such a severe downturn and one which may not even be growing fast enough to create any jobs at all.
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