An Unusually Strong GDP Number

When the 2nd quarter GDP number came in at 1.9 percent last month, nearly everyone was talking about how much lower it would get revised. But today's update showed that growth was even higher at 3.3 percent thanks to upward revisions to exports and inventory investment and a downward revision to imports.

Still, despite the robust figure, most economists didn't change their dim outlooks for near-term growth.

Here is UBS economist James O'Sullivan to Reuters: "This number seems to overstate the underlying strength even though exports are obviously strong."

Goldman Sachs: "The details of the revision are not particularly supportive for growth."

RDQ Economics: "The strength of the economy in the second quarter suggested by the expenditure estimate of real GDP growth seems truly bizarre and is a product of a declining real trade gap."

Wrightson-ICAP: "The upward revision to the advance Q2 GDP estimate was even sharper than expected, but probably doesn't change the outlook for this quarter very much, with a substantial slowdown in overall growth still quite likely."

The consensus view that we're in a recession is also unlikely to get changed after today's release. And while it's not at all unusual for GDP to be positive during NBER-declared downturns, it's also not unique for the number to show seemingly robust growth. Here are the previous times were GDP growth came in above three percent during a full recessionary quarter:

1949 Q3 - 4.6 percent
1970 Q3 - 3.6 percent
1981 Q3 - 4.9 percent