On the last day of April, the folks at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis will announce how much they think the U.S. economy grew--or didn't--in the first quarter of this year. This "advance" estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) will stand as the clearest indicator yet of whether the U.S. has fallen into a recession.
Until May 29, that is, when Commerce releases a revised "preliminary" GDP number. On June 26 comes the "final" first-quarter GDP, but even that won't really be final: in a few years there will be a "benchmark revision" that changes everything yet again.
This...
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