FIRST QUARTER “GROWTH” AN ABYSMAL 0.2 PERCENT …
|| By FITSNEWS || The U.S. economy “grew” at an abysmal 0.2 percent rate in the first quarter of 2015 – a terrible number under any circumstances, but an especially horrific print in light of the unbounded optimism we were spoon fed at the beginning of the year. In fact the number was far worse than the 1.0 percent growth rate Wall Street was expecting.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), economic growth for the fourth quarter of 2014 clocked in at 2.2 percent.
Revised updates will be released on May 29, according to the agency.
As bad as things are, they could have been much worse. Were it not for a surge in inventory (the largest in nearly five years), GDP would have plunged by 2.5 percent. Also while consumer spending did grow at a modest rate, as we’ve previously noted the vast majority of that growth was on higher energy costs – oh, and mandatory health care coverage.
In other words not really “consumerism” at all … which is what we’ve been saying was going to happen all along.
Courtesy of our friends at Zero Hedge, here’s what that looks like …
(Click to enlarge)
(Chart: Via)
Yeah …
We wrote last week about a big manufacturing miss – and this week about slumping consumer confidence. And of course all this is on top of anemic job growth (and zero job growth where it really matters).
And there’s a bigger problem. The current lack of growth is part of an increasingly worsening broader downturn. America’s economy hasn’t grown at an annual rate of three percent in ten years. It hasn’t hit four percent growth in fifteen years. And it hasn’t hit five percent growth in more than thirty years.
By contrast, growth exceeded five percent in twelve out of thirty years from 1950-1980. And it exceeded four percent in seventeen out of those thirty years.
We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Until our leaders reverse course and engage the free market – not more wealth redistribution, crony capitalism, welfare statism and global interventionism – don’t expect anything to change. In fact expect things to get worse.
Listen to us now … hear us later.
34 comments
Everything is great!!!!
FITS is FLABBERGHASTED …..yet again…LMAO…
Who TOLD YOU years ago…?????….
The definition of doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result is not insanity…as the widely accepted cliche suggests….it’s STUPIDITY…
Most of FITS and his ignorant MoFos are still jerking off because I called the 2012 presidential race wrong….but I was DEAD right -unfortunately -about what a F*#king Failure- of the American people – and what a f*#king DISASTER- Obama is….
While the DEmocrat idiots sit around and celebrate cheating the country, TWICE……
You and your website called the 2014 mid terms 100%…and your site didn’t crash election night…lol
You got that right…(;
And didn’t FITS “crash” in 2014…an election he suggested was invalid because not enough people voted to his liking….
My guess is FITS’ server went down on election night, when the Democrats got the snot kicked out of them…and FITS CRAPPED his pants….that spilled over onto the server…LMAO…
If no one visits a web site, will it crash? Would anyone know?
We have to assume it is both online and crashed simultaneously, at least until some poor unsuspecting soul lets his morbid curiosity get the better of him.
Variations in GDP such as this are actually quite common during expansions. They occurred in the following years – 1995, 2000, 2002 2006 and 2007. It has nothing to do with politics, but the ebb and flow of demand. They typically occur in early quarters of the year (Q1 and Q2 1995, Q1-2000, Q4-2002, Q2 and Q3-2006 and Q1-2007). They typically are followed by higher growth rates in subsequent quarters. For example in 2002 the rate fell to .25%, then rebounded back to 3% and then 5%. They can be caused by a variety of events, including anticipation of tax season, late returns of refunds, increases or decreases in gasoline costs, and very often with the decrease in demand for durable goods which is often somewhat volitale. Anyway, there’s your primer for today on economics. Hope it helps. Tango – you’re free to call me lian and dumb@$$ now, as you will most certainly do.
Only ‘growth’ in spending are the health care costs/premiums that Muslim Obama inflicted on American people with government mandated health care.
You this dumb Rocky?If gas prices weren’t low it would be -2%.
The shills for Obama are dwindling in massive amounts, each time it becomes more apparent of what a failure Obama is…
FITS even seems to be waffling on it…
When there is only ONE Idiot left….trying to convince an already persuaded country that Obama is not a disaster…it will be Rocky the Fool…..LMAO…
I give Rocky more credit than Boz however.Rocky obviously was just brain washed at one of the state controlled universities by a vietnam era tenured professor and thinks emotionally without facts. Boz is over on the Tim Scott article praising socialism and communism while attacking “free market” values.My guess is Boz has a pic of Mao,Stalin and Jane Fonda on that North Vietnam tank on the wall of his basement…beside his bobble head doll of Gloria Tinabu….
They would make a nice couple. :)
I think Rocky is paid. No one could be THAT f*#k! Ng stupid for free….Boz is just a Dumb@$$ ….no one would pay him to be such a clown…
Brilliant observation.
Your even more stupid for free – as best I can tell your blog managed to generate what – zero revenue less subsciption costs to the server?
Flagged as idiotic.
Private college in Virginia, Masters from USC.
It appears the largest driver was a decrease in investment by energy companies domestically in the face of lower oil prices, and a drop in exports. Savings rates also increased, as did disposable income, but consumers have elected to put that money away for now. So says the Wall Street Journal. New home sales are also up, and those spur demand on durable goods with a 4-5 month lag. So again, slumping quarters are typically followed with stronger quarters. We’ll have to wait and see.
So lower gas prices is why the economy is not growing. Okay Rocky.
The impact of lower oil prices was that high-cost oil extraction has been cut back, since it’s not profitable. A 43% decline in investment in mining and oil extraction. That’s pretty siginficant. Don’t question me, question the Wall Street Journal.
First-quarter GDP growth had averaged 0.6% since 2010 and 2.9% for all other quarters.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-gdp-expands-at-0-2-pace-in-first-quarter-1430310699
didnt trickle down economics start about 30 some odd years ago?
It’s Reagan’s fault????…LMAO..You are one ignorant MoFo….LMAO…you people are PRICELESS…
It’s all your fault isn’t it?
1980 marks the year that it was decided that tax cuts for the rich would spur economic growth. But I guess that’s just a coincidence.
Obama vs Reagan – Not even close
Obama’s just like Reagan…Except when he’s NOT…
Chart is STARLING….
LINK: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/obama-reagan-job-growth.png
Front Page….
LINK: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/04/obama-vs-reagan-big-government-socialism-proves-to-be-as-disastrous-as-expected/
I’ve been doing more than my share of trying to support the food & bev numbers.
“Courtesy of our friends at Zero Hedge…”
…where we import all of our official-looking gloom and doom, despite the fact that grown-up fact checkers regularly disprove the vast majority of their predictions over the past years (with a few exceptions related to breaking corruption stories, which are almost always broken on the web before the mainstream media buys into them anyway).
If you’ve been investing in accordance with the advice on ZeroHedge, your portfolio kinda sucks right about now.
War is coming. Revolution will break out on a massive scale. And there will be no place for the corrupt sacks of shit to hide, either.
Zerohedge? Hahahahaha!!! That’s some foolishness right there.
Bingo…it’s for angry white guys who want to be Tyler Durden:
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-zero-hedge-makes-your-money-vanish.html
Saw somewhere that zero hedge had predicted 200 of the last 2 recessions. Pretty funny.
That’s good stuff! A buddy of mine in an investing group in which I participate has a little side hobby of investing in three imaginary portfolios- Jim Cramer, Motley Fool, and ZeroHedge (as a lesson to his clients). They all suck pretty hard, but only ZeroHedge stays in the red (and has lost money every year). Case in point, they spent years in the mid-to-late 2000’s predicting all kinds of runaway inflation. They finally shut in 2010-11, but folks dumb enough to listen to their years of wailing about it lost their ass if they invested for it. I’ve always said that if you cry gloom and doom long enough, eventually you’ll be right.
I want to P in your face.
That’s just weird…and not very nice.
Actually, the real source comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. ZeroHedge did NOT come up with that graph by themselves.
Looks like you are the foolish one.