At last, some good news about the U.S. economy. Sort of. The government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reckons the economy grew at an annual rate of 4 percent in the second quarter of the year (data subject to revision). If that rate continues, five years of a lackadaisical recovery would be replaced by a growth rate more consistent with past recoveries. The government also revised its estimate of a 2.9 percent decline in the economy in the first quarter to a less-disastrous drop of 2.1 percent. But hold the bubbly. Put the quarters together and the -2.1 percent first quarter combined with the +4 percent second quarter means that the tepid growth rate that has characterized the economy for too long was essentially unchanged in the first half of the year.

The real question is whether the 4 percent reported growth rate is a new normal, the first step on the long road to a rapidly growing economy, or a one-off fluke. As always, the evidence is mixed. The bad news is that 1.7 percentage points of the second quarter spurt were accounted for by a build-up of inventories: real final sales of the stuff the economy produced were up only 2.3 percent. In the past, growth based on churning out goods that piled up on retailers’ shelves or in wholesalers’ warehouses has slowed as production was cut back to allow a draw-down of the inventory overhang. As one Texas oilman told me in a year in which drilling activity slowed, “You don’t plant ‘taters when you have a cellar full of ‘taters.”