To cap that off, there was of course the news last week that real GDP in the final quarter of 2001 rose a little more than had earlier been estimated. So it is not surprising that people have recently begun to talk increasingly about the shape of a pick-up in US growth.
The forecasters polled by Consensus Economics collectively increased their forecasts for US growth in 2002 quite substantially when asked in February – even prior to the latest GDP revision. If what we are seeing is indeed the first stage of a recovery, and if it continues, then the recession of 2001 will have been very mild indeed by historical standards.