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GDP Slows to Crawl in First Quarter, Up 0.1%

DA60

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'The U.S. economy slowed in the first quarter to one of the weakest paces of the five-year recovery as the frigid winter appeared to have curtailed business investment and weakness overseas hurt exports.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, advanced at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.1% in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had forecast growth at a 1.1% pace for the quarter.'


GDP Slows to Crawl in First Quarter, Up 0.1% - WSJ.com
 
Gotta love how they always blame it on the weather.
 
It snowed in Minnesota.

Yesterday.

Yes, this impacts things.
La dee dah. I remember two feet of snow in early June back in the 90s. I'm sure it "impacted things" but it didn't bring the economy to a screeching halt.
 
It was a horrible Jan - March. The real measure is what is April - June. If that comes up anemic then we have issues. I am not ready to jump out the window on the Jan - Mar report. My work hasn't even started yet this year because of the weather and I am heavily tied into construction.
 
Its George Bush's fault....

It isn't just Jan-March, its 2008-2014 and every additional indicator that shows we're in big trouble.

Housing fell 14.5 Percent last month and 5 years going on 6 with a economy that has to be propped up with unprecedented QE and there are still people that refuse to accept that the people THEY elected are absolutely incompetent and highly dishonest.

Its not like you Libs weren't warned either. Since 2008 Conservatives and other honest and objective individuals have warning you people of the dire consequences of your actions.

But ideology pre-empts truth in the Liberal psyche.
 
It was a horrible Jan - March. The real measure is what is April - June. If that comes up anemic then we have issues. I am not ready to jump out the window on the Jan - Mar report. My work hasn't even started yet this year because of the weather and I am heavily tied into construction.

By my rough calculation, roughly half of the country (by population) was not/was barely affected by the snowstorms...including CA, TX and FL (which alone make up over 1/4 of the total population).

States - Ranked by Size & Population - ipl2 Stately Knowledge: Facts about the United States

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2014/txt/gdp1q14_adv.txt

I'll buy that the weather negatively affected the GDP for Q1 2014...but no way that I will buy that it single handedly plummeted the entire economy to virtual stagnation in Q1.
 
By my rough calculation, roughly half of the country (by population) was not/was barely affected by the snowstorms...including CA, TX and FL (which alone make up over 1/4 of the total population).

States - Ranked by Size & Population - ipl2 Stately Knowledge: Facts about the United States

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2014/txt/gdp1q14_adv.txt

I'll buy that the weather negatively affected the GDP for Q1 2014...but no way that I will buy that it single handedly plummeted the entire economy to virtual stagnation in Q1.

Well it's a good thing you won't buy it because nobody is claiming the weather was the only factor,
 
Well it's a good thing you won't buy it because nobody is claiming the weather was the only factor,

Well, you do not know everybody, so you cannot know if someone did claim that or not.

But anyway, I will be more specific...I do not even think it was the largest factor.

The fact that economists dropped their estimate by about 50% just for the weather and still the economy came in far lower then even those pessimistic estimates strongly suggests to me that the weather was not even close to the largest factor.
 
My work is nationwide and it rained to much to work, snowed to much to work...it was just tough weather. They still have frost restrictions in the North. It was rough.

Sure it wasn't the only reason...but it was a major contributor in my sector which is construction.
 
My work is nationwide and it rained to much to work, snowed to much to work...it was just tough weather. They still have frost restrictions in the North. It was rough.

Sure it wasn't the only reason...but it was a major contributor in my sector which is construction.

Fair enough.
 
It was a horrible Jan - March. The real measure is what is April - June. If that comes up anemic then we have issues. I am not ready to jump out the window on the Jan - Mar report. My work hasn't even started yet this year because of the weather and I am heavily tied into construction.
Most of the large construction projects don't begin(in Minnesota at least) until April 1. Even later if the frost isn't out of the ground like it wasn't this year.

I never had much faith in this administration to begin with so I'm not real optimistic but I will agree that we have SERIOUS issues if things stagnate into the summer. There is just nothing left to blame it on except for bad policy.
 
My work is nationwide and it rained to much to work, snowed to much to work...it was just tough weather. They still have frost restrictions in the North. It was rough.

Sure it wasn't the only reason...but it was a major contributor in my sector which is construction.

Yeah, there's a hangar in Minnesota that was supposed to be finished last October. They're finally making real progress now. My company has been waiting to rent space in it. :(
 
Yeah, there's a hangar in Minnesota that was supposed to be finished last October. They're finally making real progress now. My company has been waiting to rent space in it. :(

It is killer when big construction products don't go off in time. Last year the season ended early and the season is starting late. That is a lot of money not at work right now.

Not the only reason, and I am the first to jump on this administration, but weather was terrible for making money this winter.
 
By "they" I assume you mean the vast majority of economists?
The vast majority of economists are just desperate to come up with excuses to maintain the fiction of a recovery because they are in some way dependent on people continuing to buy into the blatantly rigged stock market. Everything up to this point has been based on massive and unsustainable injections of cash from the government through bailouts, stimulus, and the Federal Reserve. Had it not been for the temporary uptick in health insurance payments courtesy of Obamacare, the GDP would have contracted. Mind you, that is the annualized figure and it is likely the economy saw a substantial quarterly contraction. One piece of data not getting attention is the massive drop in mortgage applications the previous week. Mortgage applications are at four-year lows and refi applications are at six-year lows. Home sales now are being driven primarily by cash purchases and investors looking to rent properties or flip them. None of that is about the weather as it is an ongoing issue. One effect weather will have is that there will be a significant bounce due to some of the backlog. That will fade and the downward trend will most likely resume.
 
No worries. An increase in the minimum wage will fix everything. We all know that those on the minimum wage end of things are the real drivers of the economy.
 
U.S. trade gap narrows, but not enough to help GDP

U.S. trade gap narrows, but not enough to help GDP | Reuters


'The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in March as exports rebounded, but the improvement was probably not enough to prevent the government from revising down its estimate of first-quarter growth to show a contraction.'

The Commerce Department said on Tuesday the trade gap shrank 3.6 percent to $40.4 billion, broadly in line with economists' expectations. When adjusted for inflation, the deficit dipped to $49.4 billion from $49.8 billion in February.

March's shortfall, however, was a bit bigger than the $38.9 billion that the government had assumed in its advance first-quarter gross domestic product estimate published last week.

Economists said the data implied about a two-tenths of a percentage point reduction to the first quarter's 0.1 percent annual growth pace. The report came on the heels of March construction spending and factory inventories data that also proved weaker than the government had assumed in its advance GDP report last Wednesday.

"There is a very high chance that GDP will be revised to show a contraction in the first quarter, possibly in the neighborhood of minus 0.5 percent," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.'


So...the first quarter was negative growth.

Oh, that's right, the-dog-ate-my-homework-excuse...the weather did it.

bart-simpson-defence-in-workplace-investigation-sinks-swearing-employee.jpg
 
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