Atlanta Fed GDPNow Forecast Spirals Toward Zero

Jon Blogosphere, Economy, Fiscal Policies, Government, Market Commentary

I hope the model is wrong.
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, which forecasts GDP growth in the US, dropped to 0.6% seasonally adjusted annualized GDP growth for the first quarter. This means, if economic growth at this rate continues for an entire year, the US economy would edge up only 0.6% for the year.
As more data for the quarter is released, the model becomes a more accurate predictor of GDP growth, as measured in the first estimate for that quarter by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). So now the first quarter is over, and more data for the quarter is piling up, and the GDPNow forecast is spiraling down in direction of zero.
The forecast dropped by half from April 4, when it was still 1.2%. I added the red arrow to the chart to show just how fast and how far it fell in the past seven weeks, from 2.5% to 0.6%.

This post was published at Wolf Street by Wolf Richter ‘ Apr 7, 2017.