MORE HOPE AND CHANGE – AT 8:43 A.M. ET:  The bad economic news keeps coming back, and it has to have a major impact on the election.  From The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. economy slowed its pace of expansion in the first three months of the year compared to the prior quarter, as government spending fell and a build up in inventories eased.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of all the goods and services produced in an economy, grew at an inflation-adjusted annual rate of 2.2% in the first quarter of 2012, the Commerce Department said Friday. It was the agency's first reading of growth for the quarter.

The gain came in below expectations. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast first-quarter GDP would increase at a 2.6% rate. In the final three months of 2011, the economy grew at a 3.0% rate.

Commerce said the slowing expansion "primarily reflected a deceleration in private inventory investment and a downturn in nonresidential fixed investment," a category that includes spending on structures, computers and industrial equipment.

COMMENT:  There actually hasn't been any good economic news in months.  It's hard to see what the Obama administration can present to the American people unless things improve over the summer. 

April 27,  2012