After offering our own updated GDP forecast for the second and third quarters of 2012 earlier this morning, we were looking over the White House's 27 July 2012 Mid-Session Review for the budget of the U.S. government, and specifically at Table 2, where the White House forecasts that the average GDP growth rate for the calendar year of 2012 will be 2.6%.
Taking into account that the annualized GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2012 was just recorded on the same date of 27 July 2012 to be 2.0% and that the first indication for the real growth rate of GDP in the second quarter was 1.5%, to hit that 2.6% mark, the White House apparently believes that economic growth in the U.S. will surge to reach an average annualized growth rate of 3.5% in both the third and fourth quarters of 2012.
Since we're now one month into the third quarter of 2012, clearly, this means that the White House believes that happy days are here again!