Read: https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-4th-quarter-and-year-2024-advance-estimate
"Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024".
Pardon my French, but this is BS. It is meaningless. The press release doesn't say what GDP actually is. I did a search on the word "trillion", but it isn't in there. Compare that to the previous release, which states "Current dollar GDP increased 4.7 percent at an annual rate, or $333.2 billion, in the third quarter to a level of $29.35 trillion." Also this: "Current dollar GDP increased 5.0 percent at an annual rate, or $358.2 billion, in the third quarter to a level of $29.37 trillion, an upward revision of $20.6 billion from the previous estimate".
First, they are using mind tricks with Real GDP vs Current GDP, based on what they think inflation is. Then they say Real GDP increased 2.3% and Current GDP increased 4.5% but this is an annual rate and not a quarterly rate. Are they saying that current GDP increased by 1.125% in the quarter (4.5% divided by 4)?
I am not happy with the obfuscation. So until they straight up tell me what Current Dollar GDP is, I am using the previous number, $29.37 trillion.
Why is this important? Because they use debt as a percent of GDP and justify rising debt because the percent of GDP doesn't increase very much. So lets look at the current situation as of December 31 for 2023 and 2024.
As of December 31, 2023, Debt to the Public is $27.0 trillion and GDP was $27.9 trillion for a Debt to GDP ration of 97%.
As of December 31, 2024 Debt to the Public is $28.837 trillion (rounded to $28.8 trillion) and GDP was $29.4 trillion (rounded) for a ratio of 98%. So the ratio went up by 1%, which is not good news but its not horrible news.
The BEA will release a second estimate of 4th Quarter GDP in about a month.
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I am trying to not post as much, so I will say a few more things in my now less frequent post. First, I predicted on December 18 that the Fed would cut rates on Jan 28, 2025 and they didn't, so I was wrong. It was freaky how much the Fed followed a 17 year pattern, but maybe the pattern has been broken. Or maybe they will still cut rates in a month or two, and the 17 year pattern is just extended slightly. I previously predicted a recession to begin on February 1, 2025, but maybe this will be delayed a few months.
Second, I just want to mention the Federal Reserve Deficit. It was $210.97 billion as of 11/27/24, and $216.6 billion as of 1/1/2025. And then as of 1/29/25 the number is $221.1 billion. So it is increasing about $5 billion per month. As I mentioned before, this is free money for billionaires. And part of the reason there is this deficit is because of the 3% mortgages that are still out there.
Third, I think there are some similarities between 2023 and 2025. On 12/30/22, the public debt was $24.5 trillion, and it increased to about $24.6 trillion by the end of January 2023, and then it pretty much froze there until about June 1, 2023 when the debt ceiling was lifted. It hit the $25 trillion mark on 6/10/23, and then quickly hit $26 trillion on 8/31/23.
Right now, the Debt to the Public is still about $28.85 trillion, and it will probably remain there until about June 1. I think we will not see $29 trillion public debt until June 2025, and then $30 trillion within a few months. After that, if there is a recession, then we can expect this to rise a trillion every 90 days.
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Update: I am still upset that BEA is playing games with the actual numbers, but I do know how to calculate. On 1/30/2024, they said that Current dollar GDP is $27.94 trillion. On yesterday's press release, they said that current dollar GDP increased at a 4.5% rate, which would make it $29.2 trillion. In the above calculation I used $29.4 trillion, so I will stick with that until I am further enlightened.
While I am on the topic, if the government hypothetically decided to do a stimulus program of $1 trillion (for easy math), and that all went into GDP and that amount was borrowed, it would increase both the numerator and denominator. If the numerator is greater than the denominator, then the ratio would actually decrease. For example, current total national debt is about $36.2 trillion and GDP is $29.4 trillion. The ratio is 123%. If both of these numbers went up by $1 trillion then the ratio would drop to 122%. So the cure for more spending is ... more spending. What if the reverse happened, Elon finds $1 trillion of wasteful government spending (not too hard to find), so GDP drops $1 trillion (but the national debt would not decrease), so $36.2 trillion divided by $28.4 trillion is 127%. So if you live in their world of lying with statistics, government spending more is good, but cutting government spending is bad. I hate these magic bull caca artists.
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