The US economy all but stalled in Q1. The 0.1% annualized expansion was weaker than any quarter last year. However, it is not a harbinger of things to come. Rather, it is a distortion that is not about to be repeated. There were two main forces at work. First, as anticipated by many economists, including the Federal Reserve, there was a correction to the unsustainable strength of inventory accumulation and net exports. Inventories and exports together took about 1.4 percentage points off GDP. What seemed to surprise some economist was how abrupt the inventories corrected. Many had anticipated the correction would be ... (full story)