{"id":189922,"date":"2010-01-29T16:22:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T21:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/29\/economics-update-98\/"},"modified":"2010-01-29T16:22:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T21:22:00","slug":"economics-update-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/29\/economics-update-98\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click for full size<\/p>\n
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<\/a> Worst post-Depression recession
H\/t Economic Policy Institute<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

So, US GDP grew at a 5.7% annual rate in the 4th<\/sup> quarter<\/a>, according to the advance estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some points: First, 5.7% is a spectacularly good number, the best in about 6 years, second, I expect that as more data comes in, future revisions will be downward, third, much of this growth was from a low “deflator” number<\/a>, basically meaning that the numbers were juiced by the extraordinarily low inflation numbers, and fourth, as Krugman notes<\/a>, it was an inventory blip, with over half of the growth being restocking of depleted inventories, not real growth.<\/p>\n

Even with this number, as the graph pr0n shows, we are still down from peak more than any other recession since WWII.<\/p>\n

Still, the Reuters\/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers was up more than forecast<\/a>, to 74.4, and given that consumer spending is most of our economy, it is a big deal.<\/p>\n

As to energy and currency, the GDP numbers did what was expected, with the dollar strengthening<\/a>, and the stronger dollar pushing oil down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[on edit<\/span>]
Just in, in 2009, wages and benefits rose the least since statistics began to be kept in 1982<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click for full size Worst post-Depression recessionH\/t Economic Policy Institute So, US GDP grew at a 5.7% annual rate in the 4th quarter, according to the advance estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Some points: First, 5.7% is a spectacularly good number, the best in about 6 years, second, I expect that as more …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}