Posts Tagged ‘GDP’

Questioning Q4 GDP

Mike Mandel has a new post which might make you a bit uncomfortable. He suggests that the US has been miscalculating its trade gap in a manner which leads to overstating GDP growth. Now, if you believe the official  statistics, it drives your entire interpretation of the past ten years.  If nonoil imports have not grown […]

Can You Figure Out This Puzzle

Tyler Cowen posted this graph of health care expenses as a percentage of GDP today and asked “What happened in 1980?” I’d ask not only what happened but why did it apparently cause U.S. expenditures to continue rising at a rate in excess of other economies’? Anyone care to offer some thoughts on this one?

Economic Recovery Looking A Bit More Solid

I’ve had a brush with a touch of pneumonia, hence blogging has taken a back seat to healing. Good drugs have helped turn the corner so I’ll try and get back to some semblance of regular posting. Anyway, there were a couple of fairly positive economic reports over the past few days that would seem […]

More Bad Revisions For Economic Growth

The incredible shrinking recovery continues apace. In case you missed it, the latest iteration of Q1 GDP growth is now 2.7%. Remember the initial number was 3.5%, then it got chopped down to 3.0% and now, well here we are in the two’s. To add insult to injury the inventory growth is now reputed to […]

How Strong A Recovery?

A graph you’ve no doubt seen before but still worth revisiting. It traces the ISM Index over the  past 60 years or so. A couple things pop out at me. One, historically, once the index starts moving up it tends to continue on that slope for a reasonable period of time. You don’t see moves […]

How Defense Saved Second Quarter GDP

I bought into the meme floating around earlier today and credited fiscal stimulus with playing a part in the better Q2 GDP numbers. It turns out that government spending helped a lot but not money being spent under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It came from the Defense Department. From the WSJ Real Time […]

JPMorgan Chase Sees Strong Turn In The Economy

Having occupied the outer limbs of a very tall tree for some time with my prediction that the economy would turn in the second half, it was with great relief that I read this excerpt from a JPMorgan Chase report on Across the Curve. I would like to steal the whole thing from John but […]