Brian Jacobs sends us these great GDP charts (below), along with this overview:
What was Up in the GDP data:
• Imports (oil)• Exports (worth less to be worthless dollar)• Government spending (national defense up 6% – Iraq
war?)
What was Down in the GDP data:
• Personal consumption (besides services which are likely required – i.e. day care)• Private investment down BIG across the board
And this cool GDP chart porn:
Great charts — thanks Brian!
Two factors normally account for about half of real PCE of services.
One is the imputed value of housing. In the gdp accounts housing is treated like business capital spending is in standard accounting.
The imputed value of housing is treated very much the way a business depreciates a large lump sum investment over several years. So it rises every quarter of month.
The second is health care services such as hospital stays or nursing home spending. this also goes up every quarter.
the change in Real PCE over the last four months has been:
dec -0.1
jan 0.1
feb 0.0
mar 0.1
So essentially all of the growth in real pce has been from these two factors.
Wanna’ take a look at some more funny stuff by means of a continued comparison between the quarters?
Consumption. . . . 0.96 . . . . 2.28
Fixed Inv. . . . . -9.72 . . . . -3.99
Fixed Res Inv. . . . -26.63 . . . -25.17
Non Res Inv . . . . -2.53 . . . . 6.04
Exports . . . . 5.49 . . . . 6.51
Imports . . . . 2.55 . . . . -1.41
Government. . . . 1.99 . . . . 1.94
Chg. Inven. . . . . 1.8 . . . . -18.3
The above numbers are from Moody’s Economy.com.
Th past actions of the Fed have a certain contigent conditioned to believe that a deep or long recession is simply not possible. If they are ever going to be wrong, it is this time.
BTW, to update my stat, over the last 30 trading days, QQQQ only once topped its 100 day MA for volume and that day topped it by a tiny bit. During this time, the 100 day MA has decreased from 178M to 157M. The bounce off the March lows is highly suspect.
Shouldn’t imports not be in the bar chart? They are not a component of GDP, except in the sense of net exports (exports minus imports).
By that notion exports shouldn’t be in the bar chart as they are not a component of GDP either. I prefer seeing both as they tell different stories. If you would prefer, just mentally reduce imports from exports and voila, you have net exports…
Those are good charts – thanks for posting. If you want to see it on a YoY basis by major component try this: http://tinyurl.com/5zwp3t
When you break it down this way the severe drop in Consumption is very clear. The only grace note was Services (Spencer – thanks for the dissection. Very helpful in light of these numbers). Worse Capex is also headed down. All of this is normal for the very early stages of a typical business cycle downturn. All the public consensus that the worst is over and a recession isn’t appearing ist das grosse unsinn. Which ought to be obvious from the minuscule increase in PCE anyway. BtW these charts are built using real, not nominal numbers. The only thing that saved the quarter from a major bust was a decrease in the decrease in Inventories (which bodes poorly for the next quarter), Net Exports and Gov’t. In other words we’re being saved by a weak dollar which is also helping out inflation and the price of oil. Not sure the candle is worth the cost. When you look at structurally this was a really scary GDP report.
Instead of politicians spending millions of dollars running for office, the money would be so much wiser spent if they surrounded themselves with a panel of experts to offer solutions to problems. Most politicians have no idea of problem solving. Could you imagine if GW was surrounded by “experts”. We could have had viable plans for the future. Unfortunately, the three contenders bring more of the same. However, it appears Obama is willing to look at ideas other than his own.