Bad Economic News: Q2 GDP Slumps to 1.3%, Durable Goods Orders Crash -13.2%

Confounded Interest ^ | 09/27/2012 | Anthony B. Sanders

[whitedog57]

Today the economic news was mostly bad. Q2 GDP was revealed to be only 1.3% rather than the expected 1.7%. Now, THAT is a major swing and a miss!

Durable goods orders fell -13.2% in August. Another big swing and a miss.

At least initial jobless claims fell to 359,000 from an upwardly revised figure of 385,000. The expectation was for 375,000 initial jobless claims. But claims of this size is still terrible given that the recession ended in June 2009.

Note that the Carter/Reagan recessions were actually two recessions. So the combination of the two Carter/Reagan recessions was 22 months. This recent recession ended after 18 months.

How can housing make a serious comeback under these conditions?

[whitedog57]

Stay the course????????????????????

[OKSooner]

Post the whole thing here?

[dps.inspect]

Ya but, Obama’s gunna tax the rich, those SOB’s... /sarc ...

[Adder]

Its HIS voters who are out of jobs and who can’t buy those durable goods.

He can LIE about it all he wants to but folks are well aware its just lies.

Leastways I hope they do. Maybe if you have food stamps that let you buy anything so you don’t feel hunger and are happy suriving on unemployment bennies you can roll over and go back to sleep.

[BfloGuy]

And don't forget that American GDP figures are multiplied by four to "annualize" them. The true figure for the quarter was .33% [that's .0033 growth] which doesn't even rise to the standard of a rounding error.

GDP is a worthless figure to begin with. Increased consumer spending does not cause economic growth. But when it's this small, it's beyond ridiculous.