Ignore the first quarter economic slump in the US. It happens every year.

“We have heard this story before: The recovery gathers momentum, but then as the new year gets underway, the reported pace of growth in gross domestic product stalls. It’s happening now. It happened in the first quarter of last year. And it happened in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Indeed, the pattern of weak first-quarter growth has occurred so often that it has led some economists to ask whether there’s a problem in how the government calculates its G.D.P. numbers. The “first-quarter effect” is rather large. In a recent research note to clients, Alec Phillips of Goldman Sachs highlighted the differential, noting that since 2010, “growth in Q1 has averaged 0.6%, while growth in the rest of the year has averaged 2.9%.” CNBC’s Steve Liesman has analyzed the data, finding that since 1985 “first-quarter growth has been by far the weakest of the four, averaging just 1.87 percent while the economy has grown 2.7 percent.” (VIEW LINK)