The recession that never was
By 
The veteran reporter John Harwood observed that the media did an awful job covering the economy, routinely acting as if a recession was inevitable with a tone suggesting that one had already arrived:
a whole lot of the press coverage was really bad https://t.co/PTlEgtmiZg— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) February 3, 2024
Biden taking away the political press’s beloved war in Afghanistan definitely started the negative turn in coverage, but the relentlessly negative coverage of the economy that had had by far the best performance among the G7 has probably had an even more negative impact.
And there has been no corresponding turn in positive coverage as the leading performance of the US had continued, inflation has receded, and the job market had continued to flourish:
Happy 2024. Since we're still pretzeling ourselves to explain why folks think the economy is bad despite all the data, here's the latest update of media coverage of inflation/recession vs unemployment/recovery, thru 12/31/23. The truly astounding imbalances persist even in Q423. pic.twitter.com/WPr4L04qkB— Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) January 1, 2024
This doesn't mean media coverage is the only factor explaining negative sentiment about the economy (see also: gas prices, https://t.co/zhq4HzI2Pb). But it's inconceivable this coverage mix – esp. about the <TOTALLY NONEXISTENT RECESSION> – makes sense given economic realities. pic.twitter.com/cH8Av5gNq4— Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) January 1, 2024
With yet another great jobs report, whether coverage of the economy starts to bear some relationship to objective reality is going to play a major role in the 2024 election.