Economy plunges into further fall back with horrible 0.2% GDP growth rate for 1Q2015. Obama to announce economy moving along smoothly under Obamanomics.

By Rob Janicki

What President Obama knows about economics could be inscribed on the head of a pin in capital letters.  

Expect every Obama sycophant and talking head to spin this poor GDP quarterly number as a one time event and that the remainder of the year will show increased growth.  Even if there is growth in the remainder of 2015, the question still arises as to what that growth will be.  Will it be enough to generate a significant or at lease decent increase in jobs creation?  At the present time consumer spending may be slowing down relative to consumer saving, even in light of the consumer savings with the decreased cost of gasoline at the pump.

The U.S. economy ground nearly to a halt in the first three months of the year, according to government data released Wednesday morning, as exports plunged and severe winter weather helped keep consumers indoors.

The gross domestic product grew between January and March at an annualized rate of 0.2 percent, the U.S. Commerce Department said, adding to the picture of an economy braking sharply after accelerating for much of last year. The pace fell well shy of the 1 percent mark anticipated by analysts and marked the weakest quarter in a year.

It takes a minimum of a 2% GDP growth rate just to keep up with growth in the population.  The 0.2 annualized GDP growth rate indicates that jobs are actually being lost relative to the growing potential work force numbers.  I would expect that the work force participation rate will also reflect this significant decline in GDP.  This will probably artificially bring in an unemployment rate consistent with today's rate of 5.5% unemployment, which then, is totally misleading.  As more people drop out of looking for work because of the hopelessness, unemployment actually appears to drop or at least remain the same.  

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