Recession a done deal though probably (hopefully) shallow

What the hell happened????

Stocks and the economy were starting to recover from their late Q4-2015, early Jan induced swoon, but then around mid January something happened.

The IRS compute glitch, Obamacare and further tax refund problems, Russian IRS hacking and fraud concerns, whatever, and flows have gotten knocked for a wallop.

We went from being $31 billion y-o-y in Federal spending on Jan 20 to now being -$5.2 billion under: a loss of over $36 billion in flows in a few weeks. People, businesses are going to feel that.

If the economy were growing at 4.0%, I'd say no big deal, but with growth at a meager 0.7% and sentiment as bad as it is, stocks crashing, that's about all she can take.

GDP is going negative for a quarter (hopefully), but possibly more.