US Economy Grew Faster Than Expected in Fourth Quarter

Unexpectedly.

The GDP figure was two things: It was lower than the last two gangbusters' quarters' numbers, as expected, and it was also higher than it was expected to be. Analysts guessed it would come in 1.4% to 2.4%; it exceeded that and came in at 2.6%.

Most of the media is, predictably, playing this as "economy cools" even though that's not really the news -- that was already known, or rather widely expected, and hence no longer news. The actual news was that the economy didn't cool all that much.

In the fourth-quarter, U.S. gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.6%, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Thursday's report beat expectations, with consensus economists polled by Bloomberg looking for growth to slow to 2.2% during the final three months of the year. The domestic economy grew at a pace of 3.4% in the third quarter and 4.2% in the second quarter.

Despite the softening in GDP in the fourth quarter, overall growth in 2018 was solid. Real GDP grew at a pace of 3.1% in 2018, measured from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the final quarter of 2018. This represented a stronger pace of annual growth than the 3% targeted by the Trump administration.

Drudge is as usual playing the leftwing fool on this, by the way, with his "3% miss" headline -- well yes, it did in fact miss 3%. Which had been expected for weeks.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:41 PM

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