Well, it looks like Macroeconomic Advisors was right:
The American economy slowed to a crawl in the first quarter, but economists are hopeful that the setback will be temporary. Total output grew at an annual pace of 1.8 percent from January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday, after having expanded at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.
It’s a little hard to know what to say about this aside from the usual: our big problem right now is sluggish growth and high unemployment, but no one seems to care about that anymore. It’s all inflation and deficits and the weak dollar. Paul Krugman will undoubtedly write a few blistering columns about this, everyone will shrug because it’s just Krugman being Krugman, and then we’ll go back to our usual right-wing kabuki show over inflation and deficits and the weak dollar.
And growth will remain lousy and unemployment will stay high and we’ll all pretend there was nothing we could have done about it.