While the usual pollyannas crow over the fact that our economy isn’t currently quite miserable enough to qualify for the R-word, I think some perspective is in order. As recently as last March, Beldar made a hair-trigger charge that Phil Izzo and the WSJ were “lying” when they truthfully reported that a majority of economists surveyed at the time thought the U.S. was in a recession. The gravamen of Beldar’s charge was that some use the word “recession” to describe certain economic downturns (e.g., 2001) even though they do not include declines in GDP for two consecutive quarters. In reality, as the lying liars at WSJ made clear to anyone who took the time to read the article, the definition of “recession” is a bit more complicated than the classic “two-bit” definition (UPDATE: I goofed; two “bits” add up to one quarter, not two, so make that the “four-bit” definition):

Although the classic definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of declines in the gross domestic product, [Stephen Stanley of RBS Greenwich Capital] pointed out that the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nonpartisan organization that is the official arbiter of when recessions begin and end, doesn’t necessarily follow that definition. “If you go back to the 2001 recession, there was only one negative GDP quarter, and there might not even be one negative quarter in this recession,” he said.

Thus, if talk of a one-quarter “recession” makes WSJ and the quoted economists guilty of lying, they’re in pretty good company, along with every partisan who whined about either the “Bush recession” (nearly all Democrats) or the “Clinton recession” (e.g. Sean Hannity), along with every economist in 2000 or early 2001 who honestly but incorrectly predicted a “recession” for the incoming President’s first year.

Further, even if one were to insist that only the classic, twofour-bit definition of a “recession” is valid, and everyone who uses the word in any other way is a lying liar, the “lie” in this case consists of being off by less than 5%. Per the article, nearly half of the economists polled believed, rightly or wrongly, that we were indeed in the midst of a two-quarter recession:

Twenty-nine of 55 respondents said they expect the economy to contract in the current quarter and 25 expect it to do so in the second. The average of all the forecasts is for meager growth — just 0.1% at an annual rate in the current quarter and 0.4% in the second.

So either they were honestly debating whether we were economically miserable enough to qualify as a “recession” whether we met the twofour-bit definition or not, or the WSJ incorrectly said “most” to describe a group only barely south of the 50% mark – akin to saying that “most” Americans elected the President in 1992, 1996 or 2000.

Beldar was having none of this. Instead, in a section under a bold heading reading “These people are lying to you,” he wrote:

Here’s the absolutely, positively, official and unequivocal latest information on the United States gross domestic product from the United States Department of Commerce, in an official press release dated February 28, 2008, a mere two weeks ago:

“Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to preliminary estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 4.9 percent.”

There is your proof. It is definitive, and it is simple, and because it is definitional in nature, it is not subject to doubt, reasonable or otherwise. Based on the most current information now available, the United States is not now in a recession. At worst, if it turns out that there is a decrease in GDP for the first quarter of 2008 (which has not yet ended, much less been definitively measured), and it then turns out that there is also a decrease in GDP for the second quarter of 2008 (which has not yet even begun), then we will be in a recession.
[Emphasis added]

Yup, power-house growth at a whopping 0.6% was indeed the preliminary estimate, all right, so per Beldar, anyone who didn’t take preliminary estimate as gospel must have been “lying.” There’s only one problem with that theory: “the most current information now [then] available” was indeed subject to doubt, which doubt we now know not only to have been reasonable, but correct. What BEA previously estimated as an anemic 0.6% growth was actually a 0.2% contraction. Of course that doesn’t mean the lying liars weren’t still lying when they said we were still in a recession back in March, since a twofour-bit recession requires a second quarter of contraction, and everyone knows that Q1 of this year produced positive growth – barely. Surely all these economists and the author of the story had crystal balls to tell them that then then-current quarter would yield a whopping 0.9% growth – assuming, of course, that today’s estimates of this year’s Q1 turn out to be more reliable than March’s estimates of last year’s Q4.

But go on, keep yelling “liar, liar, pants on fire” every time anyone complains about the economy. Maybe this time, for the first time in history, you’ll actually accomplish something productive that way. Or maybe not.

UPDATE: For the irony-challenged, the Stuart Smalley heading is intended to mock people who make hair-trigger charges of lying, not to accuse anyone of lying myself. Beldar, who I respect, is usually right but this time around he screwed the pooch. I’m not calling him a liar, though, I’m just saying he was wrong to use that word to describe others for honestly expressing opinions that differed from his (and, for all any of us know, may ultimately prove to be correct). I’m not even saying he was wrong to think we were not in a recession last March. I don’t know if we were or not, and neither does he. That is the point.

UPDATE x2: Lance has more. Also corrected my above references to a “two-bit” definition of recession. I brain farted forgot that classic “bits,” as in “shave and a haircut” for two of them, add up to a single quarter. Thus, the theory that you can never have a recession without two consecutive calendar quarters of negative growth is better described as a “four-bit” definition of recession, not two.