The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter for the first time in three years as it buckled under the weight of a severe winter, but there are signs activity has since rebounded.
The Commerce Department on Thursday revised down its growth estimate to show gross domestic product shrinking at a 1.0 percent annual rate.
The worst performance since the first quarter of 2011 reflected a far slower pace of inventory accumulation and a bigger than previously estimated trade deficit.
GDP growth was initially estimated to have expanded at a 0.1 percent rate. It is not unusual for the government to make sharp revisions to GDP numbers as it does not have complete data when it makes its initial estimates.
The decline in output, which also reflected a plunge in business spending on nonresidential structures, was sharper than Wall Street’s expectations for a 0.5 percent contraction pace.
More at Reuters
As anyone with any actual common economic sense would have foretold, when you elect a marxist cabal who publicly says wealth redistribution is a good idea, your economy will take a dive.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/04/12/the-worst-four-years-of-gdp-growth-in-history-yes-we-should-be-worried/
Now the typical leftist moronic spew is that the answer is to raise taxes (even more) on the “rich”. Well, that is complete garbage as well….
Keynesians will still show their total economic lunacy by looking at this information and claiming that their attempt to spend the country out of debt didn’t work….because we didn’t spend enough on the stimulus…. refusing to admit that the artificially low interest rates held by the Fed will eventually go back up, putting even greater pressure on budgets at the state and federal level. Raising taxes – as the left reflexively demands as the ONLY solution to bad economic scenarios – will only cause greater pain. Look at what just came out from France, where Hollande’s socialist cretins projected an additional 30 billion euro in tax revenues from their 75% “millionaire tax” – with the actual result being a 14 billion euro shortfall. Leftists can’t stand the fact that when a government becomes oppressive in taxation, people find ways to decrease their tax liability, even if it means leaving the country.
Perhaps this is why leftists are always pushing for global taxes, so people can’t escape a screwed up leftist high tax country to a more free country.
@Pete: “Keynesians will still show their total economic lunacy by looking at this information and claiming that their attempt to spend the country out of debt didn’t work….because we didn’t spend enough on the stimulus” I always love that one because, exactly who is to blame for THAT? When “stimulus” passed, Obama and his merry band of economy wreckers held total, absolute power. If $865 billion wasn’t enough, then why didn’t they take $1.7 trillion to hand over to Obama’s campaign contributors?
“Stimulus” failed because it was wasted. It failed because liberals have no economic idea whatsoever on how to run an economy. They think money is found at the end of the rainbow and the more you spend, the more you have.
Wall Street and the banks may be headed into a “Recession,” but the poor, unemployed and underemployed are living in a depression and have been for a very long time now. Food banks and soup kitchens have trouble keeping up with the demand, and charities that service the indignant populous have a very difficult time supporting the needy. (One thing that seriously hurt charitable organizations was when the IRS removed charitable donations from the 1040ez and 1040 forms, whereby you could no longer claim a charitable deduction unless you itemized.) Real unemployment has steadily been approaching 180% of the unemployment rate of the Great Depression, and the continual flood of illegal immigration is making that worse for the destitute as they compete for survival.
The homeless can not vote unless they registered while they still had a home and can figure out where their polling place is. As a result they are of no importance to local governments and the press who ignore crime statistics against America’s “invisible” pauper class. Certainly, there are entitlement programs out there that can help some of the nation’s poor (and now lower middle class), but those who do not have a mailing address have great difficulty in collecting such government handouts. The Democrats have succeeded in expanding the entitlement system higher up the middle class ranks, which ensures less will go to those worse off, and with more of the handout spending going to buy middle class votes and to keep the votes of those who are “playing” the entitlement system.
Some of my fellow conservatives may think that I am sounding like a “lefty,” but living in a warm southwestern state, it is impossible to ignore the street people. Never have I seen the numbers so large as they are now. My great grandparents and even my mother as a child operated a poor farm, from the depression continually into the late 1950’s, (having seen it as their Christian calling,) helping poor families to get back on their feet. It breaks my heart to see the forgotten of America in such squalor and everyone pretending they don’t exist.
Clearly, neither party’s leaders nor their elite, crony business pals and society’s socialites care, and they have no shame in their working to keep unemployment high, to outsource jobs, and create a situation where competition for jobs so great that it leaves many Americans hopeless.
To those Obama worshiping Democrats reading this: “Hope and Change” my ass! Your promised one and his agenda has hurt the poor greater than you can possibly fathom, so blinded are you by your selfish political goal of transformation of America into a socialist quagmire.
I was looking to a post to put what i just read,
GOOGLE IS CLOSING HIS FACTORY OF MOTO X components made IN TEXAS,
700 employees to loose their jobs with GOOGLE BUSINESS,
they will go to BRAZIL,
so sad when the jobs are so hard to find, because they close or left for a cheaper price to do business,
WHERE THEY UNIONYZE?
WOULD THE EMPLOYEES HAD ACCEPTED A MORE UPDATED EARNING MATCHING THE LOWEST ECONOMY, INSTEAD?
WHERE THEY ASK? AND RELYED TO THEIR UNIONS, TO WIN
BACK THE DECISION,
WE KNOW THAT MONEY IS GOOD ANYWHERE,