The president won't (and, in fact, can't) rule out a recession. The stock market isn't the economy, but it can be a leading indicator when it's not in full panic mode, like now.

There are serious storm clouds on the horizon. One of the most ominous is the GDPNow forecast from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

The Atlanta Fed's website cautions that this is not an official forecast. Rather, it's a mathematical model of all the indicators they consider.

This is not encouraging, especially since Germany is officially in a recession, with GDP declining in the last two years. The new chancellor seems determined to reverse that trend, but it took the possibility of a war with Russia.

France is not doing much better. Its growth projection for this year is less than 1%, not a sign of a healthy and growing economy. Hungary is also in trouble, but it's been an EU dependent for some time, while at the same time making nice with Russia over Ukraine. (On the other hand, it has something like half the population of Florida, so other than its capacity to make trouble and its prime minister's unofficial buddyship with you-know-who, it's not all much of an economic player.)

This little economic note brought to you by Treasure of Saint-Lazare, the first book in my Eddie Grant series of Paris-based thrillers. It was chosen best historical mystery of its year in the Readers’ Favorite writing contest. Its most recent companion is The Final Heist, which tells of a former KGB agent seeking a king's ransom in gold in order to set off a European war that could take Russian to the borders of Germany. I really did write it before the invasion of Ukraine.

See the Treasure series

Thanks for reading,

John Pearce
Washington, DC