[expat_panama]

Good morning gang!  Still traveling but needed to thank everyone for not letting anything happen --"market closed mainly lower but its new uptrend remained undisturbed" (from here).  We're good today, metals +0.35% and indexes +0.10%. Cheers!

[Paladin2]

We need to take govt spending out of GDP.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

There’s sumpthin goin on round here.

[JJ_Folderol]

I’ve never seen a reason for seasonal ‘adjustments’.
That’s always had a bad smell to me.

[George from New England]

Option THREE: A POTUS problem.

Bingo.

[fruser1]

Maybe Q1 slowdowns are more about folks having spent too much money on Xmas than the weather.

[SkyPilot]

US Is In A Depression: Rickards

[RayChuang88]

Here's the real problem: the Obamacare mandates have essentially sucked the life out of consumer's discretionary incomes. Small wonder why at the rate things are going, we could be in a recession by October 2015 because people have no discretionary to spend after food, utilities, fuel bill for vehicles and now health care premiums under Obamacare.

[logi_cal869]

If there are only 2 answers, -either/or-, the premise is defective.

[JayAr36]

If the data comes from the government then you have 80% BS and the rest are just lies.

[MortMan]

I wonder if they have stopped to think that there is an endemic weakness in the economy at that point because of previous quarter activity (thinking consumer activity)? The article seems to be headed toward blaming weather or measurement issues, as opposed to recognizing a fundamental characteristic of the data itself (assuming there is one in play).

I’ve never cared for the whole “seasonally adjusted” approach - there is too much opportunity to deliberately mangle the messages in the data.

[citizen]

My confidence in government economic data can best be stated thusly:
Figures lie and liars figure.