Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Friday, January 26th, and today we're talking GDP.

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slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends, happy Friday.

We are diving right into another combined macro and crypto show.

And we are starting off on the macro side of the house.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released their first estimate of Q for GDP growth.

Real GDP increased at an annualized rate of 3.3% for the quarter, putting full year growth

for 2023 at 2.5%. That's a massive increase from the 1.9% measured in 2022, and exceeded all

expectations. Forecasters were anticipating quarterly growth at 2%. And looking back at projections

before the year commenced, most economists had a recession

as their base case. Strong growth in Q4 was attributed to a number of factors. Personal consumption

growth came in at 2.8% annualized, outperforming forecasts of 2.5%. Build out of factories and

industrial plants underpinned a solid rate of non-residential fixed investment. Wholesale

trade industries

led an increase in inventory investment, and perhaps most notably, government spending, increased

at 3.3%. Now, core PCE inflation, the Fed's preferred measure, has now settled to 2% for the

second quarter in a row, right on target. And through all of this, some economists are holding on

to the recession forecast, but are pushing

...