Having to adjust your quarterly results by 3 percentage points for an economic analysis isn't "seasonal correction" or even "unforeseen market trends"; rather, it is "wishful thinking". It is almost as if someone said "we know the numbers are going to be bad but we don't want to slow growth with bad results, so just fudge the numbers to make it look not so bad and we'll put out the real numbers later".While the economy's woes have been largely blamed on an unusually cold winter, the magnitude of the revisions suggest other factors at play beyond the weather. Growth has now been revised down by a total of 3.0 percentage points since the government's first estimate was published in April, which had the economy expanding at a 0.1 percent rate.
The difference between the second and third estimates was the largest on records going back to 1976, the Commerce Department said. Economists had expected growth to be revised to show it contracting at a 1.7 percent rate. Sharp revisions to GDP numbers are not unusual as the government does not have complete data when it makes its initial and preliminary estimates.
There were also revisions to durable goods orders and capital goods shipments but those numbers are trailing indicators--they can tell us where we were 6 months ago but cannot tell us anything about three months from now.
On the other hand, the official unemployment rate for May was listed as 6.3%, a number that is actually good, but I haven't seen that number being trumpeted by the White House for reasons which elude me. Shouldn't they be telling us all about how people are going back to work because of their policies? The *real* rate, the U4, is at 6.7, which is still better than it has been in quite some time.