Sign "O" the Times

We’re reached the sad state of economic affairs where we see 2.3% quarterly growth and want to shout, “Great news!”

So here’s the great news:

The rebound in April, May and June was largely expected, after a dismal performance in the first quarter of 2015.

Before the report on Thursday from the Commerce Department, analysts on Wall Street had been expecting to see a growth rate of about 2.5 percent for the second quarter.

“I think it’s an O.K. performance. Underlying growth is stable but not spectacular,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS, a research firm based in Lexington, Mass. “The economy is plodding along.”

While hardly exceptional by the standards of the 1990s or even compared with the 5 percent burst of growth in the summer of 2014, the pace of expansion is largely in line with the trajectory of the recovery, which began exactly six years ago.

“Recovery?” They keep using that word; I do not think it means what they think it means.