July 8, 2014

Goldman's Top Economist Just Made The Call We've Been Waiting 5 Years To Hear

From Business Insider

Goldman's Top Economist Just Made The Call We've Been Waiting 5 Years To Hear

JOE WEISENTHAL | JUN. 9, 2014

Goldman's top economist, Jan Hatzius, just said the words we've been wanting to hear for five years.

He believes the economy is now growing at an above-trend pace.

Goldman's own proprietary current activity indicator (CAI) is showing its fastest growth since the crisis, and though he acknowledges that some of the strong May activity is the result of a snapback from a tough winter, he says that even without that snapback we're still growing at a strong rate.

Here's his statement:

Despite the 1% drop in real GDP in the first quarter, we believe that the US economy is now growing at an above-trend pace. The best way to see this is via our current activity indicator (CAI), which grew at an annualized rate of 3.4% in May, similar to the average of the prior two months. Although an estimated ½ percentage point of this sequential growth is due to a bounceback from the weather distortions of the first quarter, even the year-on-year CAI now stands at 2.7%, the fastest pace of the expansion so far and above our estimate of potential growth of 2%-2½%. In our view, the CAI is a far more reliable indicator of economic activity than real GDP because it is more timely, more broadly based, less noisy, and less subject to revision.

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