Fed staff says first quarter slowdown was real, not a fluke of statistics

Make no mistake: the U.S. economy's dismal first quarter was, in fact, a dismal first quarter, not a statistical fluke in the way U.S. gross domestic product is measured, Federal Reserve staff concluded on Thursday. The Fed staffers explored a puzzle noted recently by economists like Justin Wolfers and discussed across the business cable networks - that first quarter GDP growth seems to routinely lag the rest of the year. If the seasonal adjustments applied to the first quarter were biased