The above chart tells us an awful lot of information. First, we're growing but at a lackluster pace. The strongest quarters we've seen in the last five quarters is a little under 2.5% -- hardly anything to get excited about, In addition, the first quarter of this year was just strong enough to keep us positive, but not much more. Finally, the third quarter number still has one more revision to go through.
PCEs have been increasing at a decent but not strong rate. The highest rate we've seen in the last five quarters is 3.5%, but the other numbers in the chart indicate the average and median PCE number for the last 5 quarters are actually fairly low. In short, people are spending, but not a lot.
Gross private domestic investment has bounced around a great deal -- expanding over 7.5% in 3Q10, but than contracting nearly that amount in 4Q10. We'll look at this number in more detail this week to see what caused these gyrations.
First, remember the chart above is for quarters, not single months. In short, the U.S. is still a net importer, although the rate of imports has steadied over the last 5 quarters.
Government spending has also gyrated pretty wildly over the last 5 quarters, with a fairly extreme contraction at the beginning of this year and a mild contraction at the end of last year.