Economic Insights – May 2015

The economy barely grew in the first quarter of 2015. Right now, we're forecasting that real GDP actually expanded at a 0.7 percent annual rate, which is a little faster than the initial report of 0.1 percent growth reported at the end of April.

Anytime that a forecast for real GDP growth is so slow, it's well within the realm of possibility that the economy actually shrank. That's exactly what happened a year ago: After a horrible winter, the consensus estimate was that real GDP grew at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of .....