Via Jim Pethokoukis, this, from JP Morgan:
This morning we lowered our tracking of Q2 GDP growth from 1.7% to 1.4%. For some time now we have noted that our Q3 GDP call — which was already below consensus at 2.0% — had risks that were skewed to the downside.
After the latest round of data we have decided to lower our projection for Q3 to 1.5%. The strength in inventories reported this morning suggests that businesses may have got caught offsides when final demand weakened this past spring. That inventory build should weigh on production growth in the third quarter as already-cautious businesses seek to work down stockpiles. Added to this downside, the weakness in June real consumer spending will make the arithmetic for Q3 consumption a little more challenging.
Finally, the decline in gasoline prices — which had been seen as an important support to the economy — has partly reversed itself in recent weeks, thereby lessening the impetus to growth from that source. For 2012 as a whole, we are now looking for growth of around 1.7% on a Q4/Q4 basis, about the same as last year and 0.2%-point below our tracking last week. On a year-ago basis real GDP has been growing at a below-trend pace since early last year. If our forecast is anywhere near correct, that pattern will persist for at least another year, and perhaps even longer.
Notes Pethokoukis,
Basically, this is a forecast for stagnation for the rest of this year and through 2013. Also note that the forecast sees monthly job growth at just 100,000 a month in the third quarter with the unemployment rate averaging 8.2%.
The worst recovery since the Great Depression shows no signs of improving, and Team Obama should expect no last-minute lift from it.
Well, no legitimate last minute lift. But when perception is reality, all that matters is that you can control the perception. And controlling perception is made much easier when you can control the entire presentation of the message, from conception to delivery.
You say all this like insufficient economic growth is a bug, not a feature.
The fundamental flaw of a growing economy is that it disproportionally benefits those productive and enterprising who participate in it.
When your coalition is mostly built of moochers, deadbeats, chislers, and the near-entirety of the non-military bureaucratic-regulatory complex, a growing economy is lower priority.
Makers, like Asian-specific immigrants, are such unreliable voters.
Controlling perception is a problem, though, when you get media figures inadvertently having on guest commentators that, in effect, completely eviscerate any remaining credibility of said media figures live, on the air.
Perception is reality! Right up until it isn’t.
JP Morgan has his work cut out for him if he expects Dems to see reality, much less accept it.
– And then again, controlling the perception can come back to haunt you…..
Monica, Monica, Monica
“Forward!”, he cried from the rear and the front ranks died.
“Listen son,” said the man with the gun, “there’s room for you inside.”
Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
And the front rank died
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
Moved from side to side
Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it’s only round and round and round
Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words
The poster bearer cried
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There’s room for you inside
Down and Out
It can’t be helped but there’s a lot of it about
With, without
And who’ll deny that’s what the fightings all about
Get out of the way, it’s a busy day
And I’ve got things on my mind
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died
Au contraire (why does the right fall into these traps?) This is the worst depression and so-called recovery in US history when you factor in the cubic miles of dole and the cubic tens of miles of funny money powering it.
Factor in debt and “unfunded obligations” and the spinning red ink clock and there is no downturn worse than Teh Won’s little experiment in Cloward-Piven. What trickle down is left outside DC Barry & Co. have hijacked and handed entirely to Wall Street.
I know, let’s magically rescind the work requirement for unemployment, so those people who stop looking for work won’t be counted as unemployed!
Then, claim that unemployment is down, furiously handwaving the actual fall in total employment percentage…
Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama – government supremacists cut from the same cloth
Pardon my lack of ellipsis. Again.