Macroeconomic Advisers now forecasting POSITIVE GDP growth for Q2 (and Q3)

Macroeconomic Advisers (MA) is one of the best economic forecasting outfits around [Okay, maybe that is not saying a lot!] and they have revised their forecast for annualized Q2 real GDP growth from -1.6% to +0.2%. On their Web site:

Q2-2009 Current Quarter GDP Tracking 0.2 percent

That is good news.

And, they have a forecast for the coming quarter (Q3):

Q3-2009 Next-Quarter GDP Tracking 2.4 percent

That is even better news.

I am not a subscriber, so I do not have access to their full report, but Brad DeLong has a blog post that quotes MA as saying:

Please find "Q2-2009... GDP Tracking 0.2 percent", which has been updated. Exports were stronger than expected, and imports were much weaker than expected, suggesting a large upward revision to our estimate of second quarter net exports. Therefore, we raised our tracking estimate of [the annual] GDP growth [rate] in the second quarter by 1.8 percentage points to +0.2% [growth in GDP per year].

All of these forecasts are also subject to revision and the initial government report for Q2 may not align closely enough to necessarily slow that meager +0.2% growth, but nonetheless this data is it least pointing in the right direction.

-- Jack Krupansky