Here are the components of the 4.9% rate. Consumer expenditures fueled by healthy individual balance sheets rosed 2.7%. Government spending added 0.8% and construction another 0.1%. That totals 3.6%. The remaining 1.3% came from inventory building, companies still adjusting for the low inventories caused by Covid.
Nominally, not adjusting for inflation, the economy grew at 8.4% which included a 3.5% move in the GDP price deflator (inflation added 3.5% to the nominal number).
So there it is, no conspiracy, no manipulating of the numbers….the usual factors driven by some temporary anomalies like inventory accumulation.
Food for thought for the conspiracy theorists