We’re only a quarter into the new tax laws, so it’s too soon to see the grand effects of the tax revisions—but that doesn’t mean that cable TV’s talking heads aren’t grousing about all things economic. I vividly remember the early Reagan cuts where everyone was wondering where the economic growth was, and him (and Treasury Secretary Don Regan) constantly saying “stay the course” to the befuddlement and the disappointment of the journalists of the time. And then it came in 1983, with the increases in employment such that the Bureau of Labor Statistics models could not keep up with them.

At this moment, we have a mix of what seem to be conflicting economic data. Much of those data are based on estimates created by statistical and econometric models that reflect trends under old tax laws, and do not reflect the transitional behavior of consumers and business owners, especially small business owners, as they take advantage of “arbitrage” opportunities in the nature of the new law.

It’s also too soon: we don’t have any meaningful 2018 data yet, and the little we do have are very rough around the edges. Cleaned up data from the end of 2017 are only now becoming available. Q4-2017 GDP turned out stronger than initially reported. We’ll be getting Q1-2018 GDP data on Friday, April 27. For years, the Bureau of Economic Analysis has been unhappy with its Q1 estimation methods and has been revising their models. Can we trust Q1-2018 data when they come out? Even the BEA doesn’t; they’ll update them in May and June as more actual data replaces their estimates, and revise them yet again at the end of July with the annual round of multi-year GDP revisions.