On Fri, 29 Jan 2010, Sean Andrews wrote:
> [I don't get how this is so high? It seems like a huge jump. Is it
> because the workers who are employed are becoming extremely
> productive? -s]
>
> The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has issued the following
> news release today:
>
> Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services
> produced by labor and property located in the United States --
> increased at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of
> 2009, (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter),
> according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic
> Analysis.
[Here's what Krugman had to say a couple of weeks ago when Goldman Sachs predicted this:]
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/blip/
January 16, 2010, 3:38 pm Paul Krugman - New York Times Blog
Blip
Calculated Risk beat me to this: the economists at Goldman Sachs are
now predicting 5.8 percent growth in the fourth quarter. But they also
say that the headline number will be highly misleading: two-thirds of
the growth will be an inventory bounce, with final demand growing only
2 percent. In short, it will be a blip.
CR does miss one small trick, however: he asks when we last saw growth
that high combined with rising unemployment, and says 1981. That's
true. However, the last time we saw an initial report of 5.8 percent
growth combined with rising unemployment is much more recent: the first
quarter of 2002. The quarter's growth was later revised down, but at
the time there was much unwarranted celebration (unemployment didn't
peak until summer 2003).
So here comes the blip. Curb your enthusiasm.