Das gestern veröffentlichte US Bruttoinlandsprodukt lohnt noch eine weitere Nachbetrachtung.

Helmut hat den rückläufigen privaten Konsum schön in Charts gezeigt. Aber dies wirft die Frage auf, woher kommt denn der Anstieg her?

Folgende Tabelle zeigt jeweils für die einzelnen Sektoren, welchen Beitrag sie zum Bruttoinlandsprodukt geleistet haben. Der Löwenanteil des Anstieges von +0,6% gegenüber dem vierten Quartal auf das Jahr hochgerechnet, kam von der Ausweitung der Lagerbestände. ‘Auf Halde produzieren’ kompensierte rückläufige Investitionen. Zweitgrösster positiver Beitrag ist dann der private Konsum, aber schon an dritter Stelle folgen Staatsausgaben, namentlich Rüstungsausgaben.

Unter einem nachhaltigen Wachstum verstehe ich etwas anderes.

Zum Bruttoinlandsprodukt und zur Binnennachfrage ist von David Rosenberg (Merrill Lynch) Folgendes zu lesen:

Real per capital national income is now in decline. This was the second quarter in a row of a +0.6% print on real GDP. Bei einem Bevölkerungswachstum von 1% jährlich bedeutet dies Ergebnis nun ein negatives Pro-Kopf-Volkseinmommen.

Home-grown economic backdrop is very soft The key measure of domestic economic activity is real final sales to domestic purchasers, which is real GDP excluding inventories and net foreign trade.
This metric actually shrank at a 0.4% annual rate in the first quarter (it had already slowed to a meager 1.3% annual rate in the fourth quarter from 2.5% in the third). Note that this indicator never contracted in the 2001 recession – in other words, as bad as it was back then, today’s home-grown economic backdrop is softer than it was in that cycle (a cycle that ultimately saw the S&P 500 sink nearly 50% and the Fed cut the funds rate to 1%). You have to go back to the tail end of the 1991 recession to see the last time real final sales to domestic purchasers was as weak as it is now, and rare is the time that this metric goes negative without the overall economy being in a recessionary state.

Prior pillars of strength starting to feel the pinch In terms of sectors, the prior drags on GDP are getting even worse. Residential construction slumped at a huge 26.7% annual rate and this followed the 25.2% slide in last year’s fourth quarter – not since the dark days of the 1981 recession has housing been so weak. And, given the fact that the aggregate unsold vacant housing inventory surged a at 20% annual rate in the first quarter to a record 2.3 million units, further contraction is coming in this sector (it was this time last year that the consensus and the Fed were telling us that housing was not going to be a drag on GDP in 2008). At the same time, the prior pillars of strength are starting to feel the pinch.

Helmut Wüllenweber