Q1 GDP crash

Zerohedge pretends to take the BEA numbers seriously:

Remember when in January 2014, Q1 GDP was expected to rise 2.6%? Well, here comes the final Q1 GDP revision and it’s a doozy: at -2.9%, far below the -1.8% expected and well below the -1.0% second revision, it is an absolute disaster, and is the worst print since Q1 2009. And while a bad GDP print was largely expected, the driver wasn’t: personal consumption expenditures somehow crashed from 3.1% to just 1.0%, far below the 2.4% expected, meaning that all hope of a consumer recovery is dead. Finally, as a reminder, US GDP has never fallen more than 1.5% except during or just before an NBER-defined recession since quarterly GDP records began in 1947.

When I wrote The Return of the Great Depression in 2009, I noted that the average GDP revisions were larger than the delta that distinguished growth from recession. Now the revisions are nearly THREE TIMES larger.

This is the realm of pure fiction. One reason I don’t write as much about economics these days is that there is simply nothing of substance to write about. Taking these increasingly fictitious numbers seriously is akin to attempting to foresee future events by counting the numbers of fairies in your backyard.

All this tells us is that their attempt to maintain “the recovery narrative” is failing. But we knew that already.