How does that fit your ridiculous world view, since the election is over.
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Even as the government said that the United States economy grew faster than first estimated in the third quarter, economists warned that the rate of expansion could slow sharply before the end of the year as worries mount about the fiscal impasse in Washington.
The Commerce Department said Thursday that gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30, well above the 2 percent estimate it initially made in late October. But the revision was driven by increased inventory accumulation and a jump in federal spending — factors unlikely to be repeated in the current fourth quarter, economists said.
The two biggest growth areas in the third quarter — inventory growth and federal spending — “are likely to be minuses in the fourth quarter,” he said. Mr. Gault expects the annual rate to sink to 1 percent this quarter, hurt by a fiscal stalemate in Washington as well as the after-effects of Hurricane Sandy.
The US economy grew at an annualised rate of 2.7% in the third quarter of the year, revised data has suggested. The figure is significantly higher than the 2% initial estimate that the Commerce Department released just before the presidential election. Much of the growth was due to companies rebuilding their inventories, and is not expected to be sustained. The first estimate itself had beaten analysts' expectations, and fuelled the suspicions of some Republicans. The growth rate for the second quarter was confirmed at 1.3%.
Housing rebound
The revised data confirmed that a 9.5% jump in spending by the federal government during the quarter - compared with a 0.2% decline the previous quarter - played an important role in the pick-up in growth. What the first estimate had failed to pick up was the scale of restocking by private-sector businesses. This inventory build-up effect - which typically provides a temporary boost to economic activity early on in the recovery from a recession - added 0.77 percentage points to the pick-up in the overall growth rate in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said.
Other factors that boosted growth included the continued rise in consumer spending, stronger exports, and a slight rebound in homebuilding activity from historically low levels. There were also some negative factors in the data, including further cuts in state and local government spending, and a fall in construction of commercial property. Developments in the US housing market are being watched closely by economists, as they are likely to determine the durability of the recovery. Normally, periods of recovery in the US economy are led by residential construction, as building firms quickly get back to work on a backlog of projects as soon as the recession is over.
But this time round, the recession was in large part caused by the bursting of a housing market bubble, that left behind a glut of unsold homes, bankrupted many homebuilding firms, and saw the sharpest and most sustained collapse in homebuilding activity in recorded US history. Further evidence that the housing market may be on the mend was provided by the National Association of Realtors on Thursday. Its index of pending home sales - which tracks sales that have been agreed but not completed, and provides an early indicator of market activity - rose 5.2% to 104.8 in October, its highest level in five years, despite subdued activity in the north east due to the impact of storm Sandy.
Data controversy