GDP growth is anemic this quarter (1.3%) and revised down to terrible (0.4%) last quarter:
“There’s nothing that you can look at here that is signaling some revival in growth in the second half of the year, and in fact we may see another catastrophically weak quarter next quarter if things go wrong next week,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. By “things going wrong,” he said he means “if Congress actually starts implementing a massive contraction by suddenly cutting government spending immediately,” as many Republican representatives hope to do.
Consumer spending was almost flat and inflation is up. There’s nothing good here.