Morningstar predicts the gross domestic product (GDP) for the third quarter, due out this week, could be close to 2 percent despite a dismal international outlook and weaker than expected results reported by bellwethers like General Electric, IBM and Google.

Consensus estimates among economics experts remain at about 1.6 percent for the third quarter, but Morningstar suggested that recent retail and residential construction strength justifies the higher projection.

“My belief is that out-of-whack seasonal factors, weather and anticipation of new iPhones and PCs all combined to depress second-quarter sales, and that these factors largely reversed themselves in the third quarter,” wrote Morningstar’s Robert Johnson.

Editor's Note: You Owe It to Yourself to Know What Obama and Bernanke Are Hiding From Americans

“It was not a boom and a bust that the raw numbers suggest.”

Comprehensive retail sales jumped 1.1 percent in September, following gains of 1.2 in August and 0.7 percent in July, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That compared with negative growth for the three months of the second quarter.

Morningstar also noted total housing starts rose sharply to 872,000 in September, the highest monthly level since July 2008, and that building permits are running ahead of starts, suggesting increased construction activity.

Other economic prognosticators noted the slowness of the current recovery and did not project the same level of optimism as Morningstar.

Michael Bordo, a Rutgers University economist, and Joseph Haubrich, a Federal Reserve economist, concluded the current recovery is exceptionally weak as compared with prior ones.

“This is more than simply an academic debate,” Bordo wrote in a Bloomberg commentary. “If, as Haubrich and I contend, this recovery is unusually slow, then the policies of President Barack Obama’s administration must bear some of the responsibility.”

On CBS Moneywatch, a weekend commentary concluded, “In a world of diminishing expectations, if the first reading of U.S. GDP starts with a ‘2’ there will be a collective sigh of relief among investors.”

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, authors of “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,” concluded the current recovery has been retarded by the seriousness of the recession, according to Bloomberg.

Reinhart and Rogoff reiterated “that recessions associated with systemic banking crises tend to be deep and protracted and that this pattern is evident across both history and countries. ... Today, there can be little doubt that the U.S. has experienced a systemic crisis — in fact, its first since the Great Depression.”

Editor's Note: You Owe It to Yourself to Know What Obama and Bernanke Are Hiding From Americans