>On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, John Mage wrote:
>
>> The Christian Science Monitor piece said that consumers were putting off
>> big purchases in the first quarter
>
>But that seems to have turned out not to be true according to the figures
>released on Friday. Along with the news that GDP grew by 2% in the first
>quarter was the finding that consumers markedly increased their purchased
>of homes, cars and durables to take advantage of lower rates, just like
>theory and the Fed says they're supposed to.
Yes, but that GDP report was the first - "advance," in the jargon of the trade - estimate. It will be revised next month ("preliminary") and again the month after ("final"). There's no corporate profits data until the final report, and there are a lot of estimates and imputations in the advance estimate (some of them derived from the employment figures, which may be overstating labor market strength).
That's one of several reasons why I say it's hard to say just what's going on right now.
Doug