Economy In Recession, Nobody Knows

Consumer spending bolsters U.S. second-quarter growth | Reuters:

BO has gotten very unhappy with his horrible economic numbers -- the economy shrank the first quarters of both 2014 and 2014 and barely eked out something below 2% total growth both years. Small wonder that BO, whose economic numbers have been worse than W who started from a very high economic base after the internet bubble (that crashed right after W took office) W  1.7%, BO 1.6%.

As that Forbes article said at the end ...

President Obama “inherited” (another favorite word of the president’s enablers) a low GDP base and did terribly with it, well worse in comparison to his much-maligned predecessor. He inherited a high government spending base and still managed to increase that number at a rate 50% above general growth. In a rational world, we’d stifle such a failure from still having access to the controls.

But then we know we don't live in a rational world, so in this one BO is still in office, and we let him cook the books! The nation has LOTS of time for "deflategate", too little pressure in NFL footballs, but NO TIME at all  for our economic numbers being

Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.3 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. First-quarter GDP, previously reported to have shrunk at a 0.2 percent pace, was revised up to show it rising at a 0.6 percent rate.

The estimate of the effects of the "new accounting" for GDP was +3%, so the ACTUAL number to be used for comparison would be a .7% LOSS in GDP, putting us in the BO Recession! (Two quarters of negative GDP growth!). The column never mentions that this is now done under the new way of reporting GDP which I discussed here ... as a bonus, they blithely adjusted the first quarter up from -.2 to +.6! Erasing a recession! (they had actually revised the decline to .7% after initial reporting, but since it is now obvious these numbers are just being cooked as desired, "What does it matter now?")

So BO would have officially had a recession on his hands -- but now it looks like a quarter of REALLY tepid growth (.6%) and one that is STELLAR by BO standards ... 2.3%.  Pretty impressive, taking two successive quarters of -.7 which would be a RECESSION, and turning into what the Democrats and media will hail as "solid growth".

If you like your economy, you can elect a putz like BO and it will still all go OK!

When the WH and the media are working together, it takes a little more work to figure out what is actually happening! It isn't going so well ...

'via Blog this'