Gross Domestic Product Expands 5.7%

[0bami]

The U.S. economy surged at the end of 2009, a bigger-than-expected gain driven more by slower inventory liquidation than by consumer spending.

Gross domestic product rose a seasonally adjusted 5.7% annual rate October through December, the Commerce Department said Friday in its first estimate of fourth-quarter GDP.

GDP has gone up two straight quarters, rising 2.2% in the third quarter after a year of contraction. In all of 2009, GDP fell 2.4%, the biggest drop for an entire year since 10.9% in 1946. GDP rose 0.4% in 2008 and 2.1% in 2007.

GDP is the broad measure of economic activity in the U.S. Most of the 5.7% increase during the last months of 2009 was due to a slower drawdown in business inventories. Real final sales of domestic product, which is GDP less the change in private inventories, increased at an annual rate of only 2.2% in the fourth quarter. Third-quarter real final sales of domestic product rose by 1.5%.

Friday's data showed businesses in the U.S. pared inventories October through December by $33.5 billion.

Companies earlier in the year had slashed excess supplies by $139.2 billion in the third quarter and $160.2 billion in the second. The recession snuffed demand and had left storerooms and shelves bulging with unsold merchandise.

The slower fourth-quarter inventory drawdown added 3.39 percentage points to GDP.

Consumer spending, on the other hand, contributed 1.44 percentage points. Spending is the largest component of GDP, the so-called big engine of the economy. The report Friday said it rose by 2.0% in the fourth quarter. Third-quarter spending had climbed higher, rising 2.8% with the support of the government "cash-for-clunkers" subsidy program.

"Household spending is expanding at a moderate rate but remains constrained by a weak labor market, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit," the Federal Open Market Committee of policymakers said this week. The observation was included in a statement issued Wednesday by Fed policymakers after they agreed to leave interest rates alone. The bankers said inflation is likely to be subdued. Friday's GDP report showed the core inflation rate -- which strips out volatile food and energy prices and is closely watched by central bankers -- rose 1.4% in the fourth quarter, after rising 1.2% in the third quarter. Fed officials define their statutory goal of price stability as inflation of 1.5% to 2%.

Other price inflation gauges also rose modestly. The price index for personal consumption expenditures climbed by 2.7% after increasing 2.6% in the third quarter.

The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents, rose by 2.1%, after increasing 1.3% in the third quarter. The chain-weighted GDP price index increased 0.6%, after rising 0.4% in the third quarter.

Another component of GDP, housing, rose a second straight quarter. Residential fixed investment increased by 5.7% October through December. It surged 18.9% in the third quarter; builders were breaking ground as a government tax credit spurred buying of new houses.

Federal government spending in the fourth quarter increased 0.1%, after rising 8.0% in the third quarter. State and local government outlays fell 0.3%, the fourth drop in five quarters.

International trade gave a mild push to GDP. U.S. exports surged 18.1%, while imports increased 10.5%.

Business spending also boosted GDP. It rose by 2.9% in the fourth quarter, after falling 5.9% in the third quarter.

[marKOS]

Jan. 30 -- New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who anticipated the financial crisis, called the fourth quarter surge in U.S. economic growth “very dismal and poor” because it relied on temporary factors.

Roubini said more than half of the 5.7 percent expansion reported recently by the government was related to a replenishing of inventories and that consumption depended on monetary and fiscal stimulus. As these forces ebb, growth will slow to just 1.5 percent in the second half of 2010, he said.

“The headline number will look large and big, but actually when you dissect it, it’s very dismal and poor,” Roubini said in an interview at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “I think we are in trouble.”

Roubini said while the world’s largest economy won’t relapse into recession, unemployment will rise from the current 10 percent, posing social and political challenges.

“It’s going to feel like a recession even if technically we’re not going to be in a recession,” he said.