The economy grew at 4.8% last quarter.

Update: From the Joint Economic Committee:

GDP Grew at a 4.8% Annualized Rate in the 1st Quarter
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its “advance estimate” of growth in the inflation-adjusted (“real”) gross domestic product (GDP) for the 1st quarter of 2006.
(Available at http://www.bea.gov/bea/newsrelarchive/2006/gdp106a.pdf).
Annualized GDP growth in the 1st quarter was estimated at a rapid 4.8% rate; growth was 1.7% in the 4th quarter of last year.
Highlights:
Ø The major contributors to GDP growth in the 1st quarter were personal consumption expenditures (which grew 5.5%), business equipment and software spending (which grew 16.4%), exports (which grew 12.1%), and federal government spending (which grew 10.8%). Imports, which are a subtraction from GDP, grew 13.0%.
Ø The inflation-adjusted change in private inventories subtracted 0.52 percentage point from the 1st-quarter change in real GDP.
Ø The acceleration in growth (from 1.7% in the 4th quarter to 4.8% in the 1st) reflected faster growth in personal consumption expenditures for durable goods, an upturn in federal government spending, and faster growth in equipment and software and in exports.
Ø Growth in the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding food and energy prices, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of consumer price inflation, declined to an annualized 2.0% in the 1st quarter from 2.4% in the 4th quarter.