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The U.S. economy cooled off in the third quarter as companies cut back production to prevent a worrisome buildup in inventories, particularly of goods destined for foreign markets. Gross domestic product — the value of everything a nation produces — rose at a 1.5% annual pace from July through September, the government said T hurs day. The U.S. had grown at a crisp 3.9% rate in the second quarter. The slowdown stemmed mostly from the biggest drawndown in inventories in three years. Companies also cut spending on structures such as oil platforms and commercial buildings. Yet even as businesses showed...

Trump’s Dynamic Growth PoliciesBy: Larry Walker, IIIn an October 4, 2015 interview on Meet the Press, Donald Trump was asked which government programs he will cut so his tax reduction plan won’t blow a hole in the deficit.Trump’s first response described how we are going to save a lot in administrative costs by exempting millions of Americans from filing income tax returns. Under his plan, single individuals making under $25,000 and couples making less than $50,000 will not owe any income tax, and will thus not be required to file tax returns. This totally makes sense to me, as I...

Earlier today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released the third and final estimate of GDP growth for the 2nd quarter, and on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized basis, real GDP grew by 3.9% in the past quarter. From the BEA release: The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 3.7 percent. With the third estimate for the second quarter, the general picture of economic growth remains the same; personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed investment increased...

China’s official government statistics often raise eyebrows, whether it’s the health of state-owned enterprises run by bureaucrats or national unemployment figures that ignore up to 300 million internal migrant workers. But as the world's second-largest economy slows and threatens to drag the rest of the world with it, Beijing’s official gross domestic product numbers are once again under scrutiny inside and outside the country. Chinese billionaire, real estate magnate and Communist Party member Wang Jianlin was the most recent critic to tell Beijing to get real about growth. Jianlin's holdings include a stake in Spanish football club Atlético Madrid and...

That’s a big jump from last month’s initial estimate of 2.3%, and an even larger leap from the 0.6% GDP growth rate in Q1. A 3.7% annualized Q2 growth rate follows the same pattern of last year, when a negative Q1 led to a robust Q2 — but that ended in stagnation-level growth the rest of the year, and another wan economic annum overall. The Commerce Department credits the bump to a better mix on exports and imports and continued consumer confidence: Real gross domestic product — the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy...

The ongoing stock market meltdown is just the tip of the iceberg that is the dangerously precarious China economy. The back story -- the extraordinary market manipulation that has allowed the global economy to come to this potentially disastrous pass -- is what few commentators have yet spelled out. Here are some particulars. Most of the trillions of fiat dollars the Federal Reserve Bank has pumped into the U.S. economy as part of its Quantitative Easing (QE) strategy since 2009 have gone directly into the stock market, inflating the value of stocks to unsustainable levels. The Shiller Price/Earnings Ratio has...

WASHINGTON - America's sluggish economy still looms over our land like a stationary dark cloud that shows no sign of moving away under the Obama administration.Our nation's second quarter growth rate, as measured by its gross domestic product, came in at a mediocre 2.3 percent -- better than the first three months of this year when the economy barely grew at a sickly 0.6 percent, but nothing to write home about.Many economists were forecasting a stronger economic revival nearer to 3 percent or more. But the economy was still being pulled down by the economic undertow of anti-investment, anti-growth, anti-job...

On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its advance estimate of real gross domestic product for the second quarter of this year— covering April, May and June. The release showed output in the U.S. increasing at a rate of 2.3%. This is a major acceleration from the first quarter when real GDP increased 0.6%. “The advance estimate of second quarter GDP confirmed what was broadly expected: the economy bounced back after stumbling out of the gate to start the year,” wrote Jim Baird, chief investment officer for Plante Moran Financial Advisors, in a note on the results. While economists...

In the first quarter of 2014, the government sent shivers through global financial markets by reporting a recession-like contraction in the U.S. economy of 2.1 percent. Despite severe winter storms and record-breaking cold, economists still could not account for the deep plunge in growth. Even Federal Reserve officials worried something worse than just the effects of bad weather could be amiss in the economy. Turns out, it was the data itself and how the government calculates gross domestic product that were actually amiss. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal agency responsible for GDP, now says growth was actually 1.2...

Michigan has achieved another economic milestone on the road to establishing a reputation as the comeback state. From 2009 to 2014, the state experienced the third-highest percentage increase in state gross domestic product (GDP). The state was surpassed by just two states, both with heavy exposure to a national oil drilling boom. A widely used measure of the size of an economy, GDP is defined as the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a state or nation during a specific period of time. Michigan’s GDP has expanded 13.8 percent from 2009 to 2014. This far...

We have always been at war with Eastasia. ---Ministry of Truth, 1984. Falling GDP is good. It has always been good. And now that GDP has fallen in the first quarter and economic prospects don't look good for the near future, Politico's contributing editor, Zacary Karabell has discovered that falling GDP is good. In fact the title of this directive issued from the Politico Ministry of Truth flat out tells us that GDP’s Going Down? That’s Good!

OTTAWA--The Canadian economy shrank in the first quarter, posting its worst three-month performance in the post-crisis era, as business investment plunged in response to the decline in crude prices. Canada's gross domestic product declined 0.6% on an annualized basis in the first quarter, to 1.762 trillion Canadian dollars ($1.416 trillion), Statistics Canada said Friday. Market expectations were for 0.3% advance in the January-to-March period, according to a report from Royal Bank of Canada.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy went into reverse in the first three months of this year as a severe winter and a widening trade deficit took a harsher toll than initially estimated. The Commerce Department says the overall economy as measured by the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the January-March period. The revised figure, even weaker than the government's initial estimate of a 0.2 percent growth rate, reflects a bigger trade gap and slower consumer spending. It marked the first decline since a 2.1 percent contraction in the first three months of...

War, what's it good for? Aside from countless deaths of innocent civilians of course, it means a GDP boost for the biggest exporter of weapons on earth, the United States, and even more profits for the US military-industrial complex. Profits which mean the shareholders of America's arms manufacturers get even richer. Which is why following months of middle-eastern sabre ratling and numerous quasi-wars already raging in the region, moments ago the U.S. State Department approved the sale of 10 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters to Saudi Arabia for $1.9 billion, the first step in "a major multibillion-dollar modernization of the Saudi...

The evidence continues to mount..."Most since Lehman" has become the new meme for macro-economic data in the US as day after day brings another lacklustre superlative to be dismissed with some excuse by the cognoscenti of sell-side economists...  Of course, that is aside from anything related to aggregate jobs that is spewed by the government's official ministries of truth... (do not look at this chart)*  *  *So here are seven charts that scream "recession" is here...Retail Sales are weak - extremely weak. Retail Sales have not dropped this much YoY outside of a recession... And if Retail Sales are weak, then...

It turns out the US economy may have contracted in the first quarter. Last week, we learned that gross domestic product grew by just 0.2% in the first quarter, far below the 1% economists had expected. Then on Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported that the trade deficit in March exploded to a six-year high, $51.4 billion. The surge in the deficit — the gap between imports and exports — has been largely blamed on the nine-month slowdown at West Coast ports, which has been resolved. The slowdown and strike over a labor dispute limited the flow of goods through some...

The notion that there is a threshold above which authoritarian nations would democratize is attractive, but our experience since the end of the Cold War suggests this view is too simplistic and results in a risky foreign policy stance for the West A narrative has dominated the West’s foreign policy since the end of the Cold War: if we increase per capita GDP in authoritarian nations, they will democratize. Most notably, this doctrine was applied to China, and yet China failed to move away from its authoritarian system. Russia has gotten wealthier and returned to authoritarianism. Both nations used the...

The Atlanta Fed nailed US Gross Domestic Product in the first quarter. On Wednesday, we learned that the US economy grew by just 0.2%, far below the consensus forecast for 1% growth among economists. Of the 86 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, only four estimated that GDP growth would be 0.2% or lower. The Atlanta Fed had long forecast 0.2% growth before revising it down to 0.1% after last Friday's durable goods report. And just a day after the disappointing Q1 GDP release, the Atlanta Fed has news about Q2: the economy will grow by just 0.9%, according to their latest...

When the 0.2% GDP growth number came out on Wednesday, economists were quick to emphasize that it was just a temporary blip. [snip] Such words would be comforting indeed if it weren't the fifth April out of the past six that economists made almost the exact same claim

In this century, economic growth has averaged 1.9 percent per year—down from the 3.4 percent the prior two decades—and anemic growth is a major force squeezing wages, the middle class and working poor. Conservatives and liberals blame too much or too little government. Either way, getting policy right is critical to restoring opportunity for everyone. Here are four issues that will be tough to solve but warrant serious attention. 1. The Baby Drought The birth rate predictably fell during the recent recession but has not recovered. At 948 children per 1000 women, fertility is below what is necessary to maintain...