The Commerce Department is scheduled to report its first official estimate for the second quarter on July 30. Should be interesting!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/economy/economies.html Economists Cut 2nd-Qtr GDP Estimate (to 4.1%) in Bloomberg Poll (Update1)
July 7 (Bloomberg) -- <snip>While the survey's second-quarter forecast exceeds the 3.9 percent the government reported for January-March, indicators for June show the economy cooled in June. Payrolls expanded by 112,000 last month, about half the average for the quarter. Auto sales fell to 15.4 million vehicles at an annual rate, the lowest since August 1998. An index of the services economy fell the most since October 2001.
A separate survey by the National Association for Business Economics showed corporate economists and executives remain ``upbeat'' about the rest of the year, predicting ``solid and fairly stable'' growth at ``about 4 percent.'' <snip>
U.S. economic growth has averaged 3.1 percent annually since World War II. Growth matched that average last year, as the country continued to pull out of the 2001 recession. <snip>
The average forecast for this year is (was? ? :-) ) 4.5 percent, the highest since 1999, and down from the two-decade high of 4.6 percent predicted in last month's survey. The Commerce Department report on first-quarter GDP, at 3.9 percent, was lower than the 4.4 percent it gave in an advance report. <snip>
Economic growth and rising oil prices will push inflation rate to as high as 3 percent in the final three months of 2004 from a year earlier, the Bloomberg survey found....the consumer price index rose 3.1 percent in the 12 months that ended in May. The core index, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 1.7 percent. <snip>
Andrew Ward in New York award1@bloomberg.net.