Finally, a hard data point that comes down to many of the anecdotes I've gone thru

How many times have you heard me say that the economy seems to me (based on all the work I do, including a voracious read of earnings conference calls) more like a 1.5% type growth rate and that it is much more mixed than the consensus of it being ‘strong’ and something around 2.5%?

Q1 GDP grew by 1.6% vs the estimate of 2.5% with a particular miss with personal spending which was up 2.5% q/o/q annualized rather than the 3% that was estimated. Spending on services added 187 bps to GDP but there was no contribution from spending on goods. Services spend was led by healthcare and ‘financial services and insurance.’ On the investment side, residential construction added 52 bps while commercial structures added nothing. Spending on equipment added 10 bps and intellectual property spend which includes R&D and software added 29 bps with a particular contribution from software spend as R&D investment was flattish. Inventories were a drag of 35 bps.

Trade was a drag of 86 bps to GDP with all of that due to imports (the quirk of imports rising, raising the trade deficit, and lowering the GDP calculation) as exports added 10 bps. Government spending on the state and local side contributed 22 bps to growth while federal was little changed q/o/q.