Some good economic news that passed somewhat under the radar last week: The gross domestic product for the second quarter was revised upward pretty sharply, from an initial reading of 1.7 percent up to 2.5 percent. That's more than double the growth we saw in the first quarter of 2013.
The biggest reason for the revision was that exports, which had initially been estimated to have been growing at 5.4 percent, are now thought to have grown at 8.6 percent. That kind of upward revision has been expected ever since the Commerce Department announced that June had been our best month for exports since September 2012.
Still, this is good news, not great news. The long-term average growth for the U.S. is 3 percent, so the revised number is still a bit below that. We haven't seen growth stronger than 3 percent since the first quarter of 2012.
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