Free Republic

The White House has just redefined the word “recession” because, well, of course they did. A new GDP report is expected Thursday, which many experts anticipate will show growth declines for a second straight quarter. Since the White House has just put out an updated definition, the Biden administration can plan on evading the r-word entirely. Or so it thinks. “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the White House wrote. “Instead, both official determinations of...

U.S. nonfarm productivity unexpectedly fell in the second quarter, pointing to sustained weakness that could raise concerns about corporate profits and companies' ability to maintain their recent robust pace of hiring. The Labor Department said on Tuesday that productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, dropped at a 0.5 percent annual rate in the April-June period. It was the third consecutive quarterly decline. Productivity fell at an unrevised 0.6 percent rate in the first quarter. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast productivity rising at a 0.4 percent rate in the second quarter. Productivity decreased at a 0.4 percent rate compared...

Moments ago the Commerce department reported Q2 GDP which blew estimates out of the water, printing at 4.0%, above the declining 3.0% consensus, as a result of a surge in Inventories and Fixed Investment, both of which added over 2.5% of the total print, while exports added another 1.23% to the GDP number. The full breakdown by component is shown below. What is interesting is that the Commerce Department announced that as a result of incomplete June data, the biggest components of the GDP beat, Inventories and Trade, were estimated. In other words, assume that future revisions of Q2 GDP...

The ideal of a citizens’ commission is good. We should not have politicians picking their voters. Voters should pick their politicians and perhaps the districts lines in which they run. But ideals often prove impractical. In the case of the Citizens Redistricting Commission, impractical would be an upgrade. When I testified in front of the Commission in March of this year, I warned them of the voters’ cynicism – the sense of many that their vote doesn't count because district lines are rigged and the system, i.e. gerrymandering, is unfair. I asked them not to hire a line-drawing firm that...