A Day Without Cowbell: 4th Q 2005 GDP Estimated At Meager 1.1%

Not good, but Clinton had clunker quarters in his boom, too:

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 1.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005, according to advance estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 4.1 percent. The Bureau emphasized that the fourth-quarter "advance" estimates are based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see the box on page 3). The fourth-quarter "preliminary" estimates, based on more comprehensive data, will be released on February 28, 2006.

The major contributors to the increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from private inventory investment, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), equipment and software, exports, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a negative contribution from federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The deceleration in real GDP growth in the fourth quarter primarily reflected a deceleration in PCE, an acceleration in imports, a downturn in federal government spending, and decelerations in equipment and software and in residential fixed investment that were partly offset by an upturn in private inventory investment.

I'm not sure that this one will be adjusted upwards when more full figures are available. It seems that big numbers are usually revised up a bit, but weak numbers can go either way.

It doesn't take a genius to realize how this is going to be spun. After failing to acknowledge the Bush Boom for three years, the media will now mention it -- in retrospect -- in order to tell us that the good times they were never informed about are now officially over.

posted by Ace at 12:46 PM

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