Politicaldog101.Com

The New York Times is out with a piece building on the housing figures and revised employment figures which are showing an uptick….

( The have lower oil/gas prices in the piece …But gas prices have started back up around my way )

Nobodies saying a bust out….

But maybe the slow improvements are in line to pick up speed….

That is if the our Congress, The EU and China ‘s problems don’t continue to rob OUR Economy…

And that would be good….

For America…

And yea President Obama….

Economists at many of the most-watched forecasting organizations, both public and private, expect growth to pick up through the summer and into the fall, although only to a pace broadly considered sluggish, if not dismal.

This week, Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic consultancy often cited by policy makers, estimated the annual rate of growth in the second quarter at just 1.2 percent — well below the pace needed to reduce the unemployment rate. But the firm also projected growth to accelerate to around 2.4 percent in the third quarter.

“The pace of economic growth is picking up, but not to a rate that is very robust,” said Joel Prakken, the chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers. “It certainly is no great shakes.”

Forecasters, including those at the Federal Reserve, have been overly optimistic at several points during the slump of the last few years, of course. But the recent fall in oil prices and the stabilization of the housing market do give some gravitas to the current predictions.

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that new claims for jobless benefits dropped to their lowest level in four years, at 350,000 a week. Analysts said they were unsure how much of the decline stemmed from an actual improvement, as opposed to temporary factors in the auto industry.

The pace of economic growth will have huge implications for a country still trying to emerge from the worst downturn in 70 years amid a presidential campaign that will most likely turn on the economy.

United States growth began to surge in late 2011 and early 2012, before slowing significantly in the spring. Some of the recent headwinds — like a re-escalation of the euro zone crisis, households that are paying down their debt, and a falloff in growth in big emerging markets, like China and Brazil — remain.