The numbers for Joe Biden’s economy are in for the first quarter of 2024 and they are not good. The GDP came in far lower than was expected and overall prices rose at a faster pace than expected.
Here’s the news via CNBC:
U.S. economic growth was much weaker than expected to start the year, and prices rose at a faster pace, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
Gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services produced in the January-through-March period, increased at a 1.6% annualized pace when adjusted for seasonality and inflation, according to the department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an increase of 2.4% following a 3.4% gain in the fourth quarter of 2023 and 4.9% in the previous period.
Consumer spending increased 2.5% in the period, down from a 3.3% gain in the fourth quarter and below the 3% Wall Street estimate. Fixed investment and government spending at the state and local level helped keep GDP positive on the quarter, while a decline in private inventory investment and an increase in imports subtracted. Net exports subtracted 0.86 percentage points from the growth rate while consumer spending contributed 1.68 percentage points.
There was some bad news on the inflation front as well.
The personal consumption expenditures price index, a key inflation variable for the Federal Reserve, rose at a 3.4% annualized pace for the quarter, its biggest gain in a year and up from 1.8% in the fourth quarter. Excluding food and energy, core PCE prices rose at a 3.7% rate, both well above the Fed’s 2% target. Central bank officials tend to focus on core inflation as a stronger indicator of long-term trends.
According to CNBC, the stock market plummeted today on this bad economic news…
Stocks fell sharply Thursday after the latest U.S. economic data showed a sharp slowdown in growth and pointed to persistent inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 689 points, or 1.8%, weighed down by sharp declines in Caterpillar and IBM. The S&P 500 dropped 1.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.4%.