Antoni writes:

Remember when GDP contracted under Biden but Dems said that wasn’t a recession? What will they say now that Trump is president? ATL Fed’s GDP nowcast for Q1 just plunged from 2.3% to -1.5% as everyone begins to realize our “growth” has just been debt-fueled gov’t spending

Well, I don’t recall many mainstream economists declaring a recession. I certainly didn’t, for two reasons. First, as any sentient economist knows, recessions are not declared by the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee solely on the basis of two consecutive quarters of GDP growth, but rather personal income ex-transfers, employment and other indicators. Second, most macroeconomists were aware (unlike Dr. Antoni) of the anomalous gold imports driving the negative GDP growth nowcast — here’s my 3/3 commentary. My assessment from 3/4:

Figure 1: GDP as reported 2nd release (bold black), February median SPF (light blue line), NY Fed (2/28) (blue

Keep reading this article on Econbrowser Blog - James Hamilton & Menzie Chinn.