Today’s GDP report seems to have caused traders at Intrade, the online betting/futures market, to rethink their recession bets. Trading there today has pushed odds of a recession down to 30 percent, from 44 percent yesterday. Intrade participants were placing 70 percent odds on a recession as recently as two weeks ago.

The Intrade contract pays off if GDP shrinks for two consecutive quarters during 2008. (That’s not the official NBER definition of a recession, by the way.) With first-quarter GDP reported at a positive 0.6 percent, such a result becomes far less likely. Most forecasters think the economy will remain weak in the second quarter, then rebound in the third quarter as Americans spend their economic-stimulus checks. A downward revision of the first-quarter number still may be most likely way for this recession bet to pay off.