Commentary: GDP report paints picture of a recovery edging along
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Is the economic outlook, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke described it, really so "highly uncertain?"
Looking at the admittedly dated statistics released for the second quarter, showing 2.4% growth (compared to the massively upwards-revised 3.7% of the first quarter), you get the idea that the economy is behaving much as what would be expected after emerging from a credit-led recession. See full story.
Facing mounting debt burdens, consumers are retrenching, now more than ever as various government spending incentives expire, as real personal consumption expenditure slowed to 1.6% from 1.9%.
Banks aren't lending to any great degree, so the low interest rates the Federal Reserve is providing don't do much other than to bolster profit margins for lenders.
Still, the report indicates the economy isn't completely awful either.
As the weather improved from the first quarter, residential investment surged 27.9%.
Exports were up 10.3%, showing that U.S. companies remain competitive in selling goods to fast-growing economies like China and Brazil.
And unless companies are completely off-base in their predictions about the economy going forward, business equipment spending would not have surged 21.9%. Nor would private business inventories have jumped $75.7 billion.
In all, the Commerce Department's report paints a picture of a faintly growing economy, vulnerable to -- but certainly not in -- a double-dip recession.
Why that's hard for the policy makers at Fed headquarters to read is anyone's guess.
