Surprise: U.S. Economic Data Have Been the World's Most Disappointing
by Steve MatthewsA Catarina Saraiva
11:47 AM EDT March 13, 2015
It's not only the just-released University of Michigan consumer confidence report and February retail sales on Thursday that surprised economists and investors with another dose of underwhelming news. Overall, U.S. economic data have been falling short of prognosticators' expectations by the most in six years.
The Bloomberg ECO U.S. Surprise Index, which measures whether data beat or miss forecasts, fell to the lowest since 2009, when the nation was in the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
There's been one notable exception to the gloom, and it's a big one: payrolls. The economy added 295,000 jobs in February and 1.3 million over four months, a reflection of a healthier labor market in which the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest in almost seven years.
Most everything else? Blah.
This month alone, personal income and spending, manufacturing as measured by the Institute for Supply Management, auto sales, factory orders, and retail sales have all come in a bit weak.
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/surprise-u-s-economic-data-most-disappointing-in-the-world
= new reply since forum marked as read
The growth rate's a bit low, but not unconscionably so. But the "news" isn't about the growth rate. It's about the growth rate compared to expectations.
It says far more about observers' expectations than about anything affecting consumers, government budgets, etc., etc.
Pretty much every prediction ("expectation"
that's been verifiable has been exaggerated since 2009. The effect of the stimulus; job growth; increased revenue as a result of income; health-care related expenses.
Partisanship gives Obama credit for and denies him responsibility for this, depending on whether it makes him look good or not. So lower health care expenses are usually in line with lower economic growth. Health care costs not up too much; ACA costs less; go Obama! But that same lower economic growth that automatically results in lower health care costs have bad consequences as well: For those, we excuse him and blame our enemies.
(My personal view: We view our leaders as demi-gods, when they're just mere fallible mortals and have far less control over the forces of nature and the economy than we need to believe. We need to believe that somebody is there, Father God, father king, or parental technocrat, somebody better able than ourselves to keep the stochastic wolves at bay and comfort us in a nihilistic, uncaring universe. Once upon a time it was just the forces of nature that we feared. Now it's the forces of a large, unwieldy economy, nations 3000 miles away, and, yes, still the forces of nature.)
