when I read that I said to myself WTF??? No, I don't believe it.

Never believe anything they say about the economy

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAnope.

???

Link to tweet

We basically have a ticking timebomb.

With AI related job displacements increasing and the end of ACA subsidies, we’re going to see a spike in bankruptcies, needless death, and well happy republicans.

yet, I don't want Krasnov's policies to thrive. And, yes, it is extremely difficult to put credence in the figures we're fed by a less-than-transparent government.

Not trusting anything coming from this administration.

somewhere last week on a newscast that stores say sales are sluggish. People are shopping, but not buying as much.

Okun's law is an empirically observed relationship between unemployment and losses in a country's production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okun%27s_law

This seems an obvious thing, but Okun did a good job of quantifying it.

A couple of points though:
This is Q3 data, so we should have had this back in October. This means this data is capturing what happened over the summer and not the more recent slowdown in the economy. That said, holiday spending rose 4.2% this year according to Visa--but some of that is likely driven by higher prices IMO.

Imports are slowing due to tariffs, and they are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP--so imports going down actually makes the GDP number look better even though your local toy retailer that went out of business due to tariffs might beg to differ.
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-september-trade-deficit-lowest-more-than-five-years-goods-exports-soar-2025-12-11/

"The top 10 percent of U.S. households now account for nearly half of all spending, Moody’s Analytics recently estimated, the highest share since the late 1980s. Consumer sentiment has climbed among high earners but steadily fallen for other groups."
https://web.archive.org/web/20251019114215/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/business/economic-divide-spending-inflation-jobs.html
So these numbers are likely fueled by the "K-shaped" economy. When 90% of the population is in some sort of angst about their personal economy it eventually leads to political problems that even the top 10% can't get you out of.

It is hard to imagine that the 317,000 federal employees forced to leave the government this year will continue their spending habits for very long. Private sector employment remains flat, so that means that many--if not most--of these former federal workers have not reentered the workforce. At some point soon this should show up in the economic data--possibly in the Q4 numbers if we can rely on them.

So, if unemployment continues to tick up in Q4 we will certainly expect Okun's law to show up in the data.

how much of that was credit card debt ?
how do they define "economy" (spending) ?
what was the non-consumer economy rate during that time ?
checks in the mail - I love you - I won't ...

Tariffs, kicking out so many immigrants we might actually get workforce population declines, the 45 day shutdown, and of course, the downsizing of the departments that actually produce these reports have all contributed to increased uncertainty and variability in the data.

That said, people are terrible at identifying when we're in a recession. There are people everywhere that say we're in a recession whenever the party they voted for doesn't hold the Presidency. There are permabears that have called "15 of the last 2 recessions". There are people on DU that have said we've been in a recession for most of the last 25 years. There are mainstream economic commentators and forecasters that insisted we were going to enter a recession for some reason or another. (The Sahm rule in '24. The laughable contention that the Fed was raising rates "too fast" in '22. And so on.) Nevertheless, the US economy, which is bigger than any one man, keeps on.

Damn the so called founding fathers screwed up big time by assuming Americans would never elect a full blown criminal to the White House.

The entire administration is corrupt. Why would I believe any numbers they release ???

As they tell us not to believe our lying eyes.

Last edited Tue Dec 23, 2025, 01:02 PM - Edit history (1)

Here's just a couple of excerpts

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumer-confidence-slides-december-lowest-151443095.html

I have every doubt this is true. I can see road traffic is lighter than other years. Similar to the 2009-10 drop compared to 2006-07.

Last edited Wed Dec 24, 2025, 05:04 AM - Edit history (2)

Some notes I made from this article - a mix of excerpts and my notes, sorry

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-economic-growth-accelerates-third-133710066.html

4.3% annualized rate. Economists polled by Reuters expected 3.3%

Consumer spending increased at a 3.5% rate. Much of ‌the consumer spending acceleration resulted from a rush to buy electric vehicles before the September 30 expiration of tax credits. Motor vehicle sales dropped in October ‍and November, while spending elsewhere was mixed.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the shutdown could slice between 1.0 percentage point and 2.0 percentage points off GDP in the fourth quarter. (The shutdown began October 1 -- just after the end of the July 1 - Sept 30 period of this Q3 GDP report)

Surveys suggest consumer spending is being driven by higher-income households, thanks to a stock market boom that has inflated household wealth. In contrast, middle- and lower-income consumers are struggling ... K-shaped economy ...

That phenomenon (K-shaped economy) also is playing out among businesses. Economists said large corporations have mostly managed to withstand ⁠the blow from the import duties, which have increased ​costs, and are investing in artificial intelligence. (Investment outlays helps the GDP number). But smaller businesses ​are struggling with tariffs.

=======================================================
Additional factors from other media reports:

. . . Exports rose at an annualized rate of 8.8%, boosting the GDP number.

. . . Federal spending also played a sizable role, a reflection of the large uptick in defense spending as well as buyouts for federal workers.
=======================================================

Remember these are conditions in the 3 months ending September 30. So all the bad economic news we've been seeing in October, November, and most of December so far, are not a part of this. The government shutdown began October 1.

Imports hurt the GDP number. Someone mentioned upthread that a reduction of imports helps the GDP number, which may be one of the reasons Q3 GDP is high. I didn't see the imports factor mentioned at all in the Reuters story

Normally there are 3 estimates for each GDP report. For Q3 these estimates are normally: end of October, end of November, end of December

I don't know whether today's report is just the first of three estimates with two more to come, or what. It's "early" for the final estimate so might be one more coming (or maybe two). My thinking wondering if we will see two more estimates is that by now, they must have the information that would normally be in the second estimate, maybe even the third. Of course I'm well aware of the shutdown delays.

Most of the information for GDP estimates comes from businesses, and they didn't shut down.

A similar situation: for the famous headline "First Friday" payroll jobs numbers, there are 3 estimates, each a month apart. From what I've read, the need for 3 estimates is due to delayed reporting from surveyed businesses, not because it fundamentally takes BLS staffers 3 months to do the work.

Edited to add - There will be one more update for sure, and that's it. This is from BEA.gov which produces the GDP reports:

https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-3rd-quarter-2025-initial-estimate-and-corporate-profits

That's why the stores are full, running sales everywhere, food is spoiling in the stores, and small businesses are closing. Got it.

One issue is the actual numbers, which is the normal issue when these statistics are released.

The other issue, which isn't completely new, but which is probably a hundred times greater under Trump, is whether the numbers can be trusted.

In fact, I think these numbers have really just become a relative indicator of how deluded society's perception of the economy is at a given time.

oh yeah they are now being run by some fascist with orange hair telling everyone the sky is green or some other BS color for the day..........my raspberries for my Cheerios have double in price since this moron came back into power...............that my leading economic indicator..........

The highest increase listed is health insurance which we knew.

++good.