AND THERE IS ZERO CHANCE...:

America's Politically Correct Recession (James Pethokoukis, 7/31/08, US News)

[I]n short, the past four quarters were 4.8 percent, -0.2 percent, 0.9 percent, and 1.9 percent (the last one possibly with a bullet). That certainly does not meet the rule-of-thumb recession definition—back-to-back negative quarters. Nor do those numbers meet the recession definition of the National Bureau of Economic Research unless the economy totally falls off a cliff from here on out.

But so what? Let's just come up with any definition we want to meet our political objectives or justify our recession predictions. Take a look at this howler from the economic consulting firm Global Insight. (Generally, I like its work very much.) According to Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh, "Based on these numbers, it is a safe bet that the domestic economy (excluding net exports) has been in recession since the end of last year."

Oh, that's right—exclude exports. It's not like the ability to sell your wares to the rest of the planet is important. The fact is, net exports had their strongest showing since 1980, adding 2.4 percentage points to real GDP growth. But ignoring inconvenient numbers is so much easier when the opposite reality would serve you so much better.

...that when the final numbers are all in--some time around 2018--the 4th quarter will have been negative.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 31, 2008 1:30 PM