{"id":24638,"date":"2014-12-26T18:10:36","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T23:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24638"},"modified":"2014-12-26T18:10:37","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T23:10:37","slug":"dont-get-too-excited-about-the-5-economic-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24638","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Get Too Excited About The 5% Economic Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some things are just not what they appear to be. <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"John H. Hinderaker\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_H._Hinderaker\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">John Hinderaker<\/a> posted an article at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powerlineblog.com\/archives\/2014\/12\/about-that-5-gdp-growth-rate.php\" target=\"_blank\">Power Line<\/a> today about the 5% <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Gross domestic product\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gross_domestic_product\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">GDP<\/a> increase in the third quarter of 2014. Admittedly, that sounds really good, but unfortunately, there is a fly in the ointment.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/12\/24\/upshot\/economy-grew-5-at-a-percent-rate-this-summer-fastest-since-2003.html?_r=1&amp;abt=0002&amp;abg=0\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a> was all abuzz on Tuesday::<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>So here, for the holidays, is the festive news: The economy roared ahead at a 5 percent annual growth rate in the July through September quarter, the fastest quarterly growth since 2003.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>&#8230;The biggest revision that boosted G.D.P. was in <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Personal consumption expenditures price index\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Personal_consumption_expenditures_price_index\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">personal consumption<\/a> spending, the biggest engine of overall economic activity, which rose at a 3.2 percent annual rate, not the 2.2 percent rate earlier estimated. That suggests that falling energy prices are leaving <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8833333333,-77.0166666667&amp;spn=10.0,10.0&amp;q=38.8833333333,-77.0166666667 (United%20States)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">Americans<\/a> in better position to spend on everything else.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Wow. That sounds really great, but let&#8217;s look a little closer.<\/p>\n<p>Power Line reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>But no: the \u201cpersonal consumption\u201d that drove the supposed <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Boom and bust\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Boom_and_bust\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">economic boom<\/a> in the third quarter was the increased cost of <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Obamacare<\/a>, spending that had been moved from the first quarter to make the third quarter look better:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is the chart:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-121501\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/xfinal-q3-gdp-contribution_2_0-jpgqresize580p2c409-pagespeed-ic-wegxgic1dmqdv5c7ifkd.jpg\" alt=\"Final Q3 GDP contribution_2_0\" width=\"580\" height=\"409\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>In short, two-thirds of the \u201cboost\u201d to final Q3 personal consumption came from, drumroll, the same Obamacare which initially was supposed to boost Q1 GDP until the \u201cpolar vortex\u201d crashed the number so badly, the BEA decided to pull it completely and leave this \u201cgrowth dry powder\u201d for another quarter. That quarter was Q3.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The article at Power Line concludes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>We can only hope that exploding Obamacare costs don\u2019t drive \u201cpersonal consumption\u201d any higher in future quarters, and also that this sort of statistical manipulation comes to an end when the endlessly corrupt <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Obama administration\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/obama-administration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Obama administration<\/a> finally departs the scene.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Between now and 2016, we need to make sure the voters understand what is going on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some things are just not what they appear to be. John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line today about the 5% GDP increase in the third quarter of 2014. Admittedly, that sounds really good, but unfortunately, there is a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24638\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1317,7,8558,285],"class_list":["post-24638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gdp","tag-obamacare","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24641,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24638\/revisions\/24641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}