Economics
Sorry, the U.S. Growth Surge Is Just a Blip
This article is for subscribers only.
Producing more stuff doesn’t help if you can’t sell it, and that was the problem with the U.S. economy last quarter.
The Commerce Department reported today that output rose at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, the best since the beginning of 2012, but final sales grew at an annual rate of only 1.9 percent. What happened to the rest? It piled up on shelves. Inventories grew the most since early 1998, according to Bloomberg.