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    August 2, 2018

    BEA: U.S. GDP Tops 4 Percent in Second Quarter

    Written by Peter Wright

    The U.S. economy grew at a 4.1 percent rate in the second quarter, up from 2.2 percent in the first quarter, according to the government’s first estimate of the gross domestic product. Growth of second-quarter GDP was the best since third-quarter 2014, and on a trailing 12-month basis has improved for the last eight quarters, according to Steel Market Update’s latest analysis.

    The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has changed and backdated the base of their GDP calculation from chained 2009 dollars to chained 2012 dollars beginning with the Q2 2018 data. In addition to changing the base, the BEA made data revisions back to some time before 1970 when SMU’s data stream begins. This is vexing when we have to go back so far to keep our data accurate, but our take is that it illustrates the dedication to data integrity expressed by economists within the BEA. In contrast, we have never seen the revision of a single number put out by Chinese data providers even from one month to the next.

    Peter Wright

    Read more from Peter Wright

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