Forecasting the GDP

We're due to get the official third-quarter GDP report from the Commerce Department on Friday of this week. In the meantime, Bloomberg News has asked a group of economists for their forecasts, and they're expecting the growth number to come in at a quarterly increase of 2 percent. That would be up slightly from the second quarter GDP growth of 1.7 percent.

The primary cause of the upswing: the rise in consumer spending. Considered to constitute roughly 70 percent of the American economy, consumer spending is thought to be up an annual rate of 2.4 percent for the June-to-September quarter. The National Retail Federation projects holiday spending to up 2.3 percent over last year.

So that's the good news. If the economists' forecast is correct, it probably means that the recovery is strong enough to sustain itself for a while, making a double-dip recession even more unlikely. The bad news is that even 2.0 percent GDP growth probably won't be enough to make a dent in the unemployment rate.