COMMERCE/ECONOMY: “On Friday [4-28-17] the government will release data that’s widely expected to show slow growth in U.S. output in the first quarter. Now—even before its release—there’s evidence output growth was even slower than this estimate will convey.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis won’t incorporate into its growth estimates recently revised U.S. retail sales data that were made public Wednesday. Instead, these revisions will be incorporated next month, when the BEA updates its first-quarter estimates of gross domestic product, the government’s broadest measure of the economy’s output.
The downward revisions to the retail-sales data suggest consumer spending was weaker in the first quarter than previously estimated. But the revisions didn’t come through soon enough to incorporate into the upcoming report.”
-Josh Mitchell, “Why the GDP Report Could Make U.S. Growth Look Rosier Than It Is,” The Wall Street Journal online, April 27, 2017 7:02pm