Not that the BEA figures actually matter any more than any other fiction being published these days, but now that Obama has been safely re-elected, the economic bad news can be released again:
A stunner out of the BEA which just reported a Q4 GDP of -0.1% that
was leaps and bounds below the 1.1% estimate, and a plunge from Q3’s
3.1%. The factors: Private Inventories, Exports and Government
Expenditures all of which contracted, by -1.27%, -0.81%, and -1.33%. The
silver lining was in Personal Consumption Expenditures which added
1.52% to the negative print, most of it however driven by a surge in
spending ahead of the fiscal cliff. Ironically, this was the biggest
government-driven detraction from growth since Q1 2011, when GDP led to a
-1.49% cut in the GDP, same in Q4 when government spending on defense
fell the most since 1972. The solution is simple: print moar drones. Enter Mali. And since everything is now AMZN-ing, we can’t wait for the spin that the GDP’s margins were actually better than expected, leading to a 200 point surge in the DJIA.
How many recessionary dips will it take before the mainstream financial media admits that we’ve been in a depression since 2008? My guess is five.