Economic analysts across the country were stunned Thursday, November 7, when the Commerce Department released its third quarter National Income and Product Accounts Gross Domestic Product Report. The document threw prognosticators for a loop, as it showed that the economy grew at a higher rate than even the most optimistic watchdogs had anticipated.
Over the course of July, August and September, the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8 percent – the fastest since the third quarter of 2012. This gain was attributed to a number of factors, including rising exports, increased business inventory, revamped home construction and an uptick in state and local government spending throughout the country.
While this good news is an unanticipated ray of sunshine in what has been a hurricane of negative reports of late, the forecast is still cloudy as to how well the positive economic conditions from the summer continued into fall. Most economists agree that the 16-day government shutdown in mid-October put the brakes on any accelerated growth and may have even reversed any positive momentum.
"I was a little surprised by the overall number, which was higher than expected, but most of that is traceable to the gain in inventories," Douglas P. Handler, chief United States economist at IHS, told The New York Times. "We are still looking at some serious issues in the fourth quarter."
There's no reason to think that unexpected blips of good news will bode well for your investments over the long term, and wealth preservation is something that every American needs to look into during these troubling economic times.