Oops, Macroeconomic Advisers now forecasting NEGATIVE GDP growth for Q2, but positive for Q3

Oops, Macroeconomic Advisers (MA) updated their Q2 GDP forecast sometime today, so please ignore my earlier blog post. Last week they were forecasting +0.2% annual real GDP growth in Q2, but sometime today they revised that to a decline of -0.1%. On their Web site:

Q2-2009 Current Quarter GDP Tracking -0.1 percent

That is still relatively good news in that recent forecasts were for a decline in excess of -1.0%.

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

Q3-2009 Next-Quarter GDP Tracking 2.5 percent

That is slightly better than last week's forecast of +2.4%.

All of these forecasts are also subject to revision and the initial government report for Q2 may not align closely with that meager -0.1% negative growth, but nonetheless this data is it least trending in the right direction.

-- Jack Krupansky