Recession? What Recession?

Well, it's official! This morning's first quarter GDP number is 0.6%.

As it happens, according to economist Brian Wesbury, who appeared on CNBC's Squawkbox to discuss the number, it is just where he forecast that it would fall.

So, let's see, it takes two negative quarters of GDP growth to define the economy as being 'in a recession.'

Fourth quarter of 2007's GDP change was positive. Now, so is the first quarter of this year.

No recession yet.

Wow! What about all the doomsayers and gloomsters, led by the two Democratic Presidential candidates?

I guess they are just plain wrong.

There were two other notable occurrences on the CNBC program this morning.

First, resident 'senior economic idiot' Steve Liesman tried to call Brian Wesbury a 'two-handed economist' and nearly had his head bitten off by the well-regarded economist. It was quite humorous, actually, watching an economics reporter try to tangle with a real economist with some actual academic training and experience.

The point at issue was Wesbury's contention that the Fed's interest rate moves had, indeed, goosed retail sales and overall spending, but that, since it also has stoked inflation, it has been a two-edged sword.

The other interesting exchange was between Wesbury and Diane Swonk, also a Chicago-based economist.

Diane agreed that economic data did not qualify the US as being in a recession. Then she immediately launched into a variety of 'soft' explanations and conjectures- income inequality, consumer confidence surveys, etc.- to allege that we really are in a recession.

Diane's specious logic and grasping at unproven, anecdotal, and, in the case of her allegation of greater changes in US income inequality, just plain wrong information, demonstrates why some people think there is a recession.

There's a reason why recessions are defined by a simple measure. That's because we define recessions by an output measure, or result, GDP change, not an input measure, or cause, such as consumer confidence, or incorrectly alleged incomes inequality or other soft data.

And now, this morning, we know the US is not in a recession.