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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (198664)	8/27/2004 10:51:51 AM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1574375

re: Well, you got pretty close No, I didn't. John

To: i-node who wrote (198664)	8/27/2004 5:07:47 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574375

<font color=brown> Oops!<font color=black> ********************************************************* Now It's Official: U.S. Growth Slowed August 27, 2004 3:58:00 PM ET By Andrea Hopkins WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. economic growth slowed more sharply in the second quarter than first thought as oil prices rose and the trade gap swelled, the government said on Friday in a report that confirmed momentum faltered in the spring. U.S. gross domestic product -- which measures total output within the nation's borders -- expanded at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the second quarter to $10.8 trillion, down from the 3.0 percent pace estimated last month by the Commerce Department. The downward revision marked a sharp slowdown from the first quarter's 4.5 percent expansion, but was widely expected by Wall Street and markets had little reaction. ``Rapidly fading fiscal stimulus, a collapse in mortgage refinancing and sharply higher energy costs reduced households' purchasing power,'' said Steven Wood, an economist at Insight Economics. While there are signs the economy picked up strength in the summer, analysts said growth is unlikely to bounce back quickly enough in the third quarter to spur job creation. ``Overall economic growth should accelerate but will likely remain below the 4 percent pace needed to reduce unemployment,'' Wood said. The uneven expansion since the 2001 recession and poor job growth in recent months has sparked criticism from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who said President Bush's economic stewardship has failed. ``These GDP numbers are the latest piece of evidence that George Bush is misleading Americans when he says that the economy has turned the corner,'' the Kerry campaign said in a statement.** A separate report showed U.S. consumer sentiment picked up more than expected in late August as oil prices eased from record highs and security fears abated. The University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment rose to 95.9 in late August from 94.0 earlier in the month, but it was down slightly from 96.7 at the end of July, according to market sources who saw the subscription-only report. Confidence took a knock early in the month as oil prices spiked to new highs and consumers expressed concern about the prospects for the U.S. economy. But with crude oil prices heading lower, analysts had expected some of this pessimism to evaporate, especially as consumers were expressing more confidence in the improvement of the labor market. U.S. Treasury bond prices were a sliver lower late in the day and the dollar rallied against most major currencies as the two reports were deemed not as bad as some had predicted. PROFITS SHRINK, INFLATION SUBDUED The Commerce Department said after-tax profits fell 1.2 percent in the April-June period compared with the first quarter. That was the weakest performance since the first quarter of 2003, when corporate profits tumbled 4.5 percent. Continued............. news.moneycentral.msn.com