Past the cycle?

Yahoo: The US economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.9% in the third quarter of 2016, the fastest rate since the third quarter of 2014.
But underneath this better-than-expected headline — Wall Street economists were looking for growth of 2.6% — we see a number boosted by two of the least-reliable elements of this report: inventories and trade.
In the third quarter, inventory accumulation added 0.61% to GDP while trade added 0.83% to growth. Neil Dutta, an economist at Renaissance Macro, notes these are the “most volatile” components of the report, adding that taking out these elements yields annualized GDP growth of just 1.4%.
The third quarter’s inventory accumulation largely offsets what had been a drag from this component of GDP over the last 5 quarters. The boost from trade was largely the result of a (likely) one-off jump in soybean exports.

It looks like we might just get by with no formal recession, farmers have picked up the slack.  I am becoming a believer in the 'bounce along at low growth' theory.