Ace of Spades HQ

April 28, 2006

1st Quarter GDP: 4.8%
— Ace

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its advance estimate of growth in the inflation-adjusted (real) gross domestic product (GDP) for the 1st quarter of 2006.
Annualized GDP growth in the 1st quarter was estimated at a rapid 4.8% rate; growth was 1.7% in the 4th quarter of last year.
Highlights:
* The major contributors to GDP growth in the 1st quarter were personal consumption expenditures (which grew 5.5%), business equipment and software spending (which grew 16.4%), exports (which grew 12.1%), and federal government spending (which grew 10.8%). Imports, which are a subtraction from GDP, grew 13.0%.
* The inflation-adjusted change in private inventories subtracted 0.52 percentage point from the 1st-quarter change in real GDP.

Not very happy about that big federal spending component, but the economy is growing rapidly.

BUT...

...don't get too happy, because economists warn that "as a rule, growth tends to end at some point."

In related news, the NYT says it uses the word "but" so frequently in pieces about the Bush Boom because it has a "surplus of the conjunction" due "buts" being carefully rationed and stockpiled during the Clinton Expansion.

"We just didn't see the need to use too many 'buts' back then," a Times editor stated. "Pretty much we just highlighted the good economic news and let people use their common sense to realize that the good times wouldn't last forever, or that every postitive econmic factor comes, inevitably, with a negative or at least a cautionary note.

"But now we find ourselves with this but-load of buts, if you will, and we have to use them all up now before they reach their expiration dates."

Posted by: Ace at 07:26 AM | Comments (9)
Post contains 287 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Sounds like a speculative forward-buy in buts to me, but I'm no analyst.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at April 28, 2006 08:11 AM (pzen5)

2 Man Wins 100 Million in Lottery, but High Taxes Loom

Cure for Cancer Found, but Heart Disease Continues to Kill Millions

Osama bin Ladin Captured, but Gas Prices Still at All Time Highs

Bush Increases Medicare Funding, but People Still Getting Sick

World Peace Achieved, but Mission Impossible 3 Still a Letdown

Christ Decends Upon Earth, but Doesn't Bring Everyone Easter Baskets Filled With Peeps

Bill Gates Promises Free PCs for Everyone, but Processors are Those Shitty Celerons with only 245 Mghz of RAM.

Posted by: The Warden at April 28, 2006 08:11 AM (rkK3q)

3 Hey, at least we don't have to worry about "Irrational Exuberance" with the entire MSM bought into the "jobless recovery" bull sh*t.

That should make Ben Bernanke's job much easier.

Posted by: Birkel at April 28, 2006 10:19 AM (DSGrX)

4 Jobless recovery?

In the last month I walked off two jobs because I was being asked to install electrical code violations. In both cases, I got another job within a day -- in one case, it was within 4 hours.

Anyone who knows what wire strippers are or a circuit breaker is can get a job almost anywhere these days.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at April 28, 2006 07:33 PM (XbJeu)

5 Those "growth" rates are also called "inflation" rates aren't they? Inflation is okay, as long as in a global economy it means that we are more able to expand our consumption and investiment, but if the rates are climbing because of unsustainable debt and speculation, then that is bad.

Isn't that what "stagflation" is? with a 4.8% increase, that indicates an almost 20% annual increase in . . . .I don't like "growth" since growth is a literal thing, how about "expansion?".... economic expansion, that means that either the entire world or a large part of the financialy viable portions of the world are either static, or growing at a less significant rate and helping to feed the US economy, or it means that the US population has to increase it's real income by 20% by the end of the year to be able to maintain the current standards of living we all enjoy.

Posted by: Wickedpinto at April 28, 2006 08:16 PM (QTv8u)

6 Those "growth" rates are also called "inflation" rates aren't they?

Actually, no they're not. No relation at all.

Isn't that what "stagflation" is?

Not right here either. Stagflation was a term created to describe the rather unique economy under Carter in which GDP growth was flat to negative and yet, contrary to Keysian doctrine, both inflation and interest rates were high or climbing.

Good times.

Tob

Posted by: toby928 at April 30, 2006 03:41 AM (PD1tk)

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