Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 4, 2025 ~ On the very day that Donald Trump is set to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, with a disapproval rating of 52 percent according to a CNN poll out on Sunday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s model for predicting U.S. economic growth is flashing red. The model is known as GDPNow and is highly respected for its accuracy. After an update yesterday based on new, incoming economic data, GDP for the first quarter is predicted to be -2.8 percent. The GDPNow staffers wrote this yesterday: “The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.8 percent on March 3, down from -1.5 percent on February 28. After this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcast of first-quarter real … Continue reading →

-

Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 3, 2025 ~ Donald Trump’s gangster diplomacy and anger management issues went viral on the front page of newspapers around the globe on Saturday, following his verbal assault on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, in the Oval Office on Friday. Those headlines were then parsed and debated on Sunday’s TV news programs here in the U.S. and by U.S. based newspaper columnists. Margaret Brennan of the CBS News program, Face the Nation, reported on her program on Sunday morning that “Our social media producers tell us that, as of this morning, we have had more than 100 million views on posts related to the meeting across our CBS News social media platforms.” The reason for the unprecedented interest is because no other U.S. President in history has conducted such thug “diplomacy” with a foreign ally by screaming at him in the Oval Office in … Continue reading →

-