Dude, where's my recession?

So asks Michael Barone, echoing U.S. News colleague James Pethokoukis: "April’s unemployment was 5 percent — a figure that once upon a time was considered full employment. The Consumer Price Index was up 3.9 percent, largely due to price rises in energy and food. “Core inflation” was 2.3 percent. Productivity was up 2.2 percent." And now news that Q1 was revised up to 0.9% GDP annualized growth. Kudlow says Year-over-year real GDP is 2.5 percent.

Sluggish numbers they may be, but hardly the 1970s-era stagflation high-misery-index numbers. These numbers don't match the picture of economic calamity the media and the Bush-hating partisans have painted for the past few quarters. We have probably digested the foreclosure/housing bubble/banking credit crunch threat and the main risk to the economy in the next year or two will be Democrat tax hikes (see prior post).