Thursday, September 29, 2011

Bull Trip!: GDP Report Q2 2011 (Third Rough Estimate)

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their third "estimate" of the Q2 2011 GDP report showing that the economy continued to weakly expand with real GDP increasing at an annualized rate of just 1.3% from Q1 2011.

On a year-over-year basis real GDP increased 1.63% while the quarter-to-quarter non-annualized percent change was 0.33%.

The latest quarterly results revealed an notable 5.3% decline in durable goods from Q1 2011 while non-durable goods showed the slowest growth since 2009 and the overall personal consumption expenditures registered the weakest showing in six quarters at 0.7%.

Government spending declined notably with the non-defense spending declining 7.6% from Q1 2011 while state and local spending declining 2.8%.

Non-residential structures supposedly expanded at an annualized rate of 22.6% from Q1 though future revisions will likely revise down this value resulting in an even weaker (possibly sub-1%) growth for overall GDP in the second quarter.