“Now you’re all $500 billion richer, according to the revised Biden administration spreadsheet.” (September 27, 2024). I will not analyze the non-argument parts of the article. I will observe that the annual update to GDP has brought the GDP series much more in line with the Philadelphia Fed’s Coincident Index output tracking.
Figure 1: Concordance index (blue), GDP before update (tan), GDP after update, GDP as of 9/27 (red square), all shown in log 2019Q4=0. The Q3 coincident index is based on the average of July and August, so it assumes a zero growth rate in September. NBER defines recession dates as gray, from peak to trough. Source: BEA, Philadelphia Fed, Atlanta Fed, NBER, and author’s calculations.
In other words, according to Zerohedge, the whole thing is a conspiracy to hide the “truth.”
…now that a perfectly timed and highly strategic data “revision” has been made just in time to dispel the fast-growing recession narrative, we know that, even just in the months leading up to the election, American consumers and households are actually quite healthy. Even if it’s completely fabricated and the result of a mouse click…
If the conspirators are so powerful, you might wonder why they didn’t also manipulate preliminary benchmarks… (See EJ Antoni for the argument that BLS intentionally upscaled preemployment releases).
