AT the start of this month, with poor job figures having just cast a shadow over the US economy, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley warned that first quarter gross domestic product growth figures might come in as low as 1 percent. Those figures were announced this morning, and in hindsight Dudley looks like an optimist: GDP growth was just 0.2 percent on an annualized basis, a steep drop from the previous quarter’s 2.2 percent.
Market reaction to the news was muted — partly because the March job figures had provided some warning and partly because there were some obvious explanations that seemed to point toward the slower growth being a temporary blip. The US economy has a habit of suffering a poor first quarter and recovering strongly over the year. The winter was a harsh one in important places, and contract negotiations affected ports on the West Coast, particularly in the first quarter. Such events are a fact of life when running a global economy and, while steps can and should be taken to mitigate them, if they are truly to blame then the US economy should rebound quickly.
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