Unfortunately, there is truly a lot of disinformation in the media. For example, fro the U.S Department of Commerce “While gross domestic product (GDP) is the broadest measure of economic activity, the often-cited identification of a recession with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is not an official designation.” And from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) “A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough.” As to NBER “In 1961, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis informed us that it planned to publish our chronology of business cycle turning points in its monthly publication about the business cycle. Doing so served to demonstrate that the government considered our dates “official.”
From John Crudele at The New York Post “it was government spending and inventory building by corporations that created most of the first-quarter gain.”
Furthermore ” In coming up with the 0.6 percent annual growth figure, the Commerce Department decided that inflation was just 2.6 percent.
….the 2.6 percent figure for price increases used for the GDP calculation was nowhere near the 4 percent inflation calculated by other government agencies.
If inflation, for instance, had been 4 percent then the nation’s economy would have contracted by an 0.8 percent annualized rate.
And not only that, if inflation was being honestly reported the economy would have contracted in the fourth quarter of 2007 as well.”
There are liars, damn liars, and statistics.
In other words, there would have been two straight quarterly declines in GDP and the debate over whether or not we are in a recession would be settled. “
