A Rising Tide?

   Economists are fond of saying that a rising tide lifts all boats. While that may be true for yacht owners in a harbor, extending the metaphor to an entire economy doesn't always work.
   However, it's sometimes a good idea to draw confidence from whatever statistical numbers you can find. The danger, of course, is in putting too much confidence in too few numbers.
   That said, here's a new number that may (or may not) give some hope for a growing recovery. The Census Bureau reported today that Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S., expanded by 2.3 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to a rise of just 0.6 percent in the first three months of the year.
   That's a healthy growth rate for the quarter ended June 30. However, here are the caveats. That 2.3 percent is a first estimate, based on an early survey. The estimates for the first quarter -- even when revised -- remained thin. For example, the first estimate for the January to March period was a negative -- -0.7 percent. The second estimate brought the rate up to -0.2 percent, and not until the third estimate, announced yesterday, did the growth rate for the first quarter go into positive territory, a bare 0.6 percent.
   Now the government says the second quarter growth rate is 2.3 percent, a sharp increase in output from the less than 1 percent in the first three months of this year.
   That's a lot of numbers to digest in a single, fast reading. Keep in mind, however, that so much volatility over a short time is no guarantee that we're in for a super spurt of economic progress.
   Technically, the Great Recession ended several years ago, but recovery has been slow and sporadic, which helps to explain why the Federal Reserve Board has been so cautious in doing anything that might stall the recovery and send the nation back into a recession.