I'm Matt Bellini, founding partner of Puck News, and I'm covering the inside conversation

about money and power in Hollywood.

With my new show The Town, I'm going to take you inside Hollywood, with exclusive

insight on what people in show business are actually talking about.

Multiple times a week, I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know, journalists,

insiders, all of whom can break down the hottest topics and entertainment to tell you what's

really going on.

Listen now.

Today, we check in with the U.S. economy, which continues to baffle and dismay anybody

with the chutzpah to predict what's going to happen next.

So to understand why the official story of the American economy doesn't really make any

sense right now, just look at GDP versus unemployment.

Official GDP estimates say the U.S. economy has been shrinking for at least six months.

Some jobs data says the U.S. economy is basically booming, adding an average of about 400,000

jobs per month this year.

So I'm not trying to sound conspiratorial, but someone is wrong here.

Either we are counting jobs catastrophically wrong, or much more likely, the initial GDP

estimates that we've received, and that we've built all of these narratives around.

They're going to be revised very soon, and they're going to show that this big, fat economic

story that the U.S. has been shrinking for two consecutive quarters that we are mired

in a recession that it was just a mirage.

Now, adding to the dismay and the confusion this week, we got the latest inflation report.

...