Goldman Sachs says +0.3% q/q AR in Q3:
Figure 1: Final sales to domestic purchasers (bold black), August Survey of Professional Forecasters median (brown), 2023-24 stochastic trend (gray), and GDPNow of 8/19 (light blue square), and Goldman Sachs of 8/22 (red square), all in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA, Atlanta Fed, Goldman Sachs, and author’s calculations.
Professor Chinn,
Given Goldman’s final sales forecast of just +0.3% q/q AR for Q3, and recent signs of sticky inflation and labor market softening, do you think we’re drifting toward stagflation?
I am also wondering if gs10 may not decline after the ff rate is lowered due to inflation concerns.
I noticed that if data from 2023q1 to 2025q2 are used with a polynomial equation, I can arrive at a forecast of 0.4% qq AR for final sales of domestic purchasers.
The results are far different from Atlanta Fed GDPNow estimate of 1.8% for FRED series FINSALESDOMPURNOW and for real final sales of private domestic purchasers FINSALESDOMPRIVPUR at 1.9%.
Who’s right Goldman or the Atlanta Fed?
Trump last week: “The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.”
No other solution? This week after the CEO hands over $11 billion of shareholder money Trump says: “Lip-Bu Tan, the Highly Respected Chief Executive Officer of the Company.”
Wow, going from Chinese Agent to Highly Respected in a few days and all it took was $11 billion. Quite the solution.
As for the grants, they were appropriated by Congress and signed into law by the CHIPS Act of 2022. Trump has no more right to use extortion in their allocation than he did for the Ukraine appropriations by Congress for which he was impeached.
I think Intel shareholders have a lawsuit over using their money to pay bribes.
Frankly, I don’t trust Trump government economic data – it looks like we will all be cross checking with private sources a lot more – Wall Street Leaning Harder on Private Data After Trump BLS Spat https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-23/wall-street-leaning-harder-on-private-data-after-trump-bls-spat
Interesting to watch these amateur mercantilist GOP lawmakers trying to close national markets to the benefit of one or two state-level manufacturers – I predict U.S. consumers will be paying more for lower quality furniture. – https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-23/gop-lawmakers-push-for-tariffs-tailored-to-help-home-state-firms
Corporations are people. Mitte s and the Supremes hav said so. This is just elected officials working for the people.
Except its at the damage done to other domestic manufacturers. Its a scam and grift. Moreno is destroying Ohio manufacturing. Pay harder attention
Don’t think you need to instruct James to pay attention. Pretty sure he knows.
Off topic – about that climate change thingie the felon-in-chief’s administration is trying to make worse:
A recent paper entitled “Declining Freshwater Availability in the Colorado River Basin Threatens Sustainability of Its Critical Groundwater Supplies” finds that ground water is being depleted in the Colorado River basin faster than is the river itself. While a grudging water-use agreement has been reached among the states which rely on the River, little has been done to manage ground water use:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL115593
The authors have taken a look outside the Colorado River basin, and finds similar ground water depletion elsewhere.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298
What is called terrestrial water storage (land, not clouds or oceans) is falling across much of the world’s land.
“Since 2002, 75% of the population lives in 101 countries that have been losing freshwater water.”
There is another wee problem with the land drying out, ’cause all that water has to go somewhere:
“Furthermore, the continents now contribute more freshwater to sea level rise than the ice sheets, and drying regions now contribute more than land glaciers and ice caps.”
So human action is taking water out of inland areas and, on a bad day, shoving it into coastal cities.
Drought, of course, hurries groundwater depletion, and there is a pattern of dry areas getting dryer and wet areas getting wetter around the globe. Bad in general, and specifically for agriculture. Food prices, ya know.