We had said that our previous note would be the last one of the year. But writing this from the mountains in Greece during the holidays, we felt it was worth making an exception. Not to revise a call, and certainly not to defend one, but to better understand what the data are actually telling us. Over the past days, our recession view was challenged, constructively, and that challenge is useful. Macroeconomics is not about winning a debate; it is about understanding the mechanisms at work. The latest GDP release does not show a recession. That statement is factually correct, and analytically insufficient. In the ... (full story)