Is the U.S. economy growing? Yes. Is it growing quickly? Not at all.
The U.S. economy grew 1.5% in the second quarter, down from 2% in the prior period, as consumers and businesses spent at a slower rate, according to a preliminary government estimate. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch projected gross domestic product would rise by 1.3%. Consumer spending climbed 1.5% compared to a 2.4% increase in the first quarter. Business investment in nonresidential structures rose by 5.3% vs. a 7.5% increase in the first quarter.
First, let's consider the good news: the economy is still growing, and it's now grown for 12 consecutive quarters, which is a big improvement on the Bush/Cheney era. Not only is the new GDP report slightly better than expectations, the Commerce Department revised economic growth estimates in a positive direction for each of the two previous quarters.
Indeed, in the case of the fourth quarter of last year (October 2011 through December 2011), GDP was revised up to 4.0% -- which turns out to be the single strongest quarter for economic growth since the start of the Great Recession.
But then, there's the bad news: 1.5% growth isn't even close to representing a robust recovery, and the second quarter of 2012 is down from the first. Given the severity of the Great Recession, and how much ground there is to make up, we need to see a significantly higher number.
Ideally, conditions like these would lead policymakers to act. Congress, for example, could take immediate steps to create jobs, inject capital into the economy, and promote growth. Alas, the 2010 midterm elections have made that impossible -- congressional Republicans have rejected the economic consensus and refuse to act.
Be sure to take a look at the chart at the top of this post showing GDP numbers by quarter since the Great Recession began. The red columns show the economy under the Bush administration; the blue columns show the economy under the Obama administration.
Update: The chart was slightly off on some of the 2010 columns. It's been corrected and the above image reflects the revisions.
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Mitt Romney and the GOP need to tell the 5 million Americans hired in the last two years that those jobs "aren't enough." The American economy is moving in the right direction. Contrary to the lies and exaggerations of an out-of-touch Mitt , Obama has not made the jobs picture "worse." Millions of new jobs have been added over the last three years and the needle continues to point forward. But America will never be able to fully recover until conservative lawmakers and Republican politicians stop their strategy of jobs sabotage and get on the page of helping this country, not just their own political aspirations. PP
Have you counted how many jobs Obama has lost in the same period, or are you assuming he's created 5 million net new jobs? Our real unemployment rate is 11%, and we still have fewer people employed than at his inauguration.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/11/news/economy/obama_jobs_record/index.htm
Yes he got handed a crappy deal, but as you can see here, he's not handling it well...
http://marketblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/percent-job-losses-post-recession.png?w=540&h=352
Lastly, do you really think taxing/borrowing/printing money for jobs is better than building the Keystone pipeline for free? (to the Gvt.) If so, do you pay income taxes, contributing to the cost?
The Boehner economy of 2012 is a scandal and is what the country gets with a GOTea House obstructing every attempt to solve the problems 30+ years of failed conservative ideas and policies have caused. Just like Boehner and McConnell wanted it. Republican obstruction at funding the public sector is costing 2 percentage points in employment. It's a scandal that's too huge to fathom in terms of human misery.
Boehner's obstruction => Boehner's economy and unemployment of 2012.
It's like a bungee or a pendulum. The first plunge (or swing) is a the deepest. Then physics kicks in and it gets progressively smaller. The problem is we've stabilized, and need something to start it moving again.
I am assuming that Steve Benen is the author of this article:
STEVE!!
The chart is rate of growth of GDP!!!
(sorry to yell)
The rate of growth is important because zero or negative is really really BAD.
The graph of "Real Gross Domestic Product, 1 Decimal (GDPC1)" gives a good picture of what the GDP has historically been and I find very informative.
Link is to FRED - Federal Reserve Economic Data.
Also - from the same page "Real Gross Domestic Product, 1 Decimal (GDPC1)"
Click Edit Graph and select Percent Change.
This gives the same data that is in the chart in the article - but includes previous years. (all the way back to 1947).
It is important to know where we stand now in relation to where we were at the beginning of the Great Recession (December 2007).
We also need to know where we stand in relation to the whole Bush terms (since the 2001 recession.
AND we need to know where we stand in relation to 1980s and 1990s.
Goodness maphi, watch your blood pressure. Mr. Benen isn't here to impart real information in context. He's here to support Obama in every way possible.
Here's a chart that I like a lot, real GDP with q/q changes.
http://mediaserver.fxstreet.com/Reports/f9720136-acd1-40ff-8cdf-0323eba1f8a8/show.php_20120628150233.png
maphi,
Your concerns are unwarranted. Steve knows everything you said. The only thing wrong is labeling of the chart, which I guess is your point, but I don't think anybody that reads this blog would be confused by that.
And nobody cares what Mr. Mitty has to say, except to give him yet another beat down.
Nope.
I'd say Maphi has a point. If you look at his graph the GDP tanked not during the previous year when Bush/cheney were funding wars, but when Obama got elected and there was a Democratic-controlled congress. The GDP only started growing about 2010 the house turned Republican. If you goto the Fred link, click edit and enter 2007-01-01 in the observation date range. you will see the very same graph shooter linked to. So, The GDP obviously did NOT suffer because of the war on terror so, you can't blame it on Bush. Why did it tank? It's looks obvious that the recovery is a natural growth pattern with very little support from the current administration.
The economy is not growing fast enough because consumers no longer have what is quaintly called "disposable income". That's the money you spend on jet skis and trips to Europe, a second home.
It is also the money you spend on a night at the movies, or lunch at McDonald's. The kids need new clothes for school- and you take them to the Salvation Army, to Good Will.
And where, pray tell, do people get disposable income?
Not by cutting taxes on wealthy people. Not by yet more deregulation. Not by doubling down on debunked supply-side stupidity. Not by killing the Fed. Not by adopting the gold standard.
It's a demand problem, and demands a demand solution. It demands a return to policies that result in less inequality. And in short demands a dismissal of the 30+ years of failed conservative ideas and polices that caused the mess. We've got a long way to go and a lot of stupid Republicans standing in the way.
Supply side economics has brought this, Bush said he was a supply sider. We need DEMAND. Gov't. can stimulate DEMAND, but chose instead to heap everything on business and telling us they will create jobs here. They did not. Stimulus by Obama and cut payroll tax is to stimulate demand, which keeps business in business. Without demand, they are toast. The global economy was supposed to cause more demand, but with U.S. jobs in other countries, the demand is suppressed!
Then the jokers want to cut more jobs for debt they created while they complain about uncertainty and foul our waters and want to further foul our lands and water. Then there's less demand.
Oil production here in the U.S. is UP, so what's up with all the complaining?
Most certainly the sun will rise in the east tomorrow and set in the west. If not, we are all toast anyway. So start creating jobs with that certainty instead of beating up on it. Not to mention the certainty that we will certainly use electricity every single day. My solar panels even work (although admittedly less) on cloudy days. Come on, that's not a reason NOT to do it. The only reason is coal and oil and natural gas doesn't want to compete.
People are available for work to put stuff together, deliver and build sites. Even coal miners can do that instead of breathing coal dust and possible collapse. There might be good spots where the mines are, maybe even close to power stations? We used to have expansions and competition instead of leveraged buyouts and mergers.
Sounds to me like oil, natural gas and coal could be being "protectionists". Protecting themselves from competition.
Oh, and solar is "new" and not traditional, so therefore Republicans reject it. Very sad. BUT even conservative Bob Lutz says electric cars are good for energy security… come on. It's OK to do solar and electric cars. In fact there is demand if price comes down. More batteries for bigger vehicles or go farther.
Disposable income was free/cheap credit from the banks in the disguise of home equity and credit cards. Now the government has the Disposable income in the form of Geitner's printing press and the QE efforts. He's writing checks our ass can't keep!
I realize the economy isn't growing anywhere close to what we need, but I also think by putting the label the "Great Recession" vs. what it really has been another "Great Depression" (it really has been that for far too many Americans) has led people to believe that WE as a nation should be "bouncing back" a bit more robustly than is actually happening.
On the other hand it is Congress that is the legislative body, and as our current robotic & stuck on stupid GOTP'ers have shown - they haven't the skill-set or the understanding of what compromise or their jobs really are all about! Not to mention that no one in Congress wants "that black guy" to look good enough at his job to get a second term - which further blinds them from actually paying attention to the real suffering of working Americans!
Then again these Congressional traitors to working Americans are either: a) feigning an obtuse-ness to the destruction that their policies have caused, or b) are so blinded by their arrogance, avarice and power they don't give a dayum about Americans making under $250k! Frankly, they've proven to me that the answer is B. Time to get the pitchforks and torches!
VOTE OUT THE GOTP in NOVEMBER!!
Why do they even track consumer confidence and spending?According to republican's that's not what drive's the economy.They believe the more money the wealthy have the better the economy.Really worked well so far has'nt it.
So you believe in the "confidence fairy"? Keynesian Paul Krugman's words, not mine.
Democrats need to tie the growth slow-down to Republican obstruction. Shouldn't be hard. But they're almost certainly too scared it would be over the heads of an idiotic public, and that concern is a mistake; they have to be educated on Boehner and McConnell's obstruction.
I couldn't agree more Disgusted...GOP claims the economy is sluggish. It would do better with Mitt at the helm and that we should double down on Bush's policies. Well, perhaps it would do better if Americans and the rest of the world could look to congress and see a vital entity working hard to solve the problems. Not the do less than nothing 112th that has served up real harm to the economy.
However it has occurred to me that the real reason that the Republicans and their sponsors want to stick with Bush's economics is that it works...for them! It is doing exactly what they want it to do...transfer the wealth of this country to them. Call me cynical but our democracy is in trouble from within. Their policies have done more to destroy the American Dream than any threat from outside our borders.
We're on the verge of destroying the country and Republicans desperately want that to come about. They truly intend to take us back to the Gilded Age. And they've got us back to the Great Depression now.
I think you are on to something. The 1% and their multinational corporations are sitting on some god awful amount in the trillions. If the world economy collapsed, their money would be devalued but I am betting they would still have some as opposed to most of the rest of us. It would be prime pickings for them when we start to drag ourselves out of the hole. They would be able to ride it out and come out on top in the "new world order"
George W. Bush was president for 5 quarters?
@Tom
[Stating the obvious] No - he was president for 2 terms.
Links in above #2, #2.1 and a really good one [Thanks Shooter] in #2.2 provide more historic data.
What was your point?