During Governor Hickenlooper’s State of the State speech earlier this month he boldly declared “our economy is back.” That “Mission Accomplished”-like proclamation now stands in stark contrast to the news today that the US economy not only didn’t grow in the fourth quarter, it contracted .1%.

Per Business Insider:

The advance estimate for fourth-quarter U.S. GDP is out.

The economy contracted 0.1 percent in Q4 versus economists’ consensus expectations of a 1.1 percent expansion. 

If the economy contracts in the first quarter of this year we’ll officially be back in a recession.

Lynn Bartels of The Denver Post reported during Guv Hick’s speech that when he declared the economy as being back, Republicans didn’t buy it.

As we noted at the time, vindicated by today’s news: