New GDP Report Showing Economic Growth Misleading (Analysis)"...GDP is composed of
four different things. We have
- consumer spending, we have
- business investment, then we have
- government, and then we have something called
- net exports.
So when you look at the first three, that’s consumer spending—what you and I go out and buy—business investment, and then government, you combine those three and you actually get a negative number.
And so, where did all the growth come from?
It came from that last category, net exports. And the mathematics behind that is, essentially, we take all of our exports and then we subtract out our imports, and that value is a contribution to GDP.
Well, because Americans were literally poorer in the third quarter, we could afford fewer imports, and that combined with the increase in exports is where we got, literally, all the growth from in the third quarter...
