by Calculated Risk on 6/17/2011 10:04:00 PM

Another quarter, another round of growth downgrades ...

Earlier this week, Catherine Rampell at the NY Times Economix wrote: The Great Growth Disappointment

Second verse, same as the first: The quarter when the economy was supposed to stage its comeback is looking just as bad as its disappointing predecessor.

... after a major bummer of an inflation report, Macroeconomic Advisers, the highly respected forecasting firm, lowered its annualized second quarter G.D.P. forecast to 1.9 percent.

And now from Jeff Cox at CNBC: Goldman Cuts GDP View to 2% as Economy Weakens (ht jb)

[Goldman Sachs] cut its second-quarter GDP outlook to 2 percent from 3 percent ... Goldman's move comes amid a week of disappointing manufacturing indicators from both the Philadelphia and New York Feds that compounded market fears over debt contagion from Greece and other peripheral eurozone nations. ...

On the bright side, [economist Sven Jari] Stehn wrote that the firm still expects economic activity and GDP to pick up later in the year, though the bar has been raised.

"At this point, we still expect a bounceback in Q3 and beyond, but will need to see significant improvement in the data over the next few weeks to maintain that view," he said.

And Stehn concluded with this comment about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's press conference next week:

"Most likely, [Bernanke] will be 'balanced' by emphasizing both the disappointment in the activity indicators and the higher inflation data," Stehn said. "So the press conference is unlikely to be pleasant for either the chairman or his audience."

Bernanke will also present the June FOMC forecasts and those forecasts should be weaker.