Some are even mentioning the dreaded R-word. The answer, as usual, comes from south of the border. On the same day that StatsCan was announcing yet another strong quarter, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Activity released its own preliminary third-quarter estimate of GDP growth. That number told a story of a slowing economy or, perhaps, a strong economy taking a growth pause. From the second to the third quarter, U.S. economic output grew at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 2.4 per cent, the slowest rate of growth since 1996.
Most economists seem to believe in the soft-landing scenario.
A look at the details of the U.S. numbers shows why. Household spending continued to grow with gusto during the third quarter. Business investment, the spending on new machines and factories and offices, also grew at an annual rate of 7.8 per cent during the quarter. Those are hardly the numbers of an imminent recession. Other economists are not so sure.