Holy GDP, Bat-economist! Wait, not so fast

Here at The Long Run Blog, our intent is to apply critical thinking to economics, money and finance.  That doesn’t mean we will always be 100% right, but it won’t stop us from taking a skeptical look at economic news.  Yesterday, a interesting piece of data came from the Commerce Department- revised GDP.  GDP for each calendar quarter comes out first as and “advanced” number meaning it is very preliminary based on a lot of estimated data.  Later it is revised as early estimates are replaced with better data.  This is called “preliminary” GDP.  Eventually, enough data rolls in that they make a final adjustment.  Yesterday, we got the preliminary number.