For the first time in three years, the American economy contracted over the course of a quarter. In the interim report on GDP, the BEA estimates that the US economy shrunk by a full point in 2014 Q1, a downward revision of the advance estimate of 0.1% growth:

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the first quarter according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 2.6 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “advance” estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, real GDP was estimated to have increased 0.1 percent. With this second estimate for the first quarter, the decline in private inventory investment was larger than previously estimated (see “Revisions” on page 3).

The decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected negative contributions from private inventory investment, exports, nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a positive contribution from personal consumption expenditures. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

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Read more:http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/29/bo...ownward-to-1-0/

And let's remember that the Regime now counts reruns of My Mother The Car in the GDP along with a raft of other garbage....

Zitat

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Now there is a new category in the quarterly G.D.P. reports called “intellectual property products,” including “entertainment originals.” For example, the production costs of what the B.E.A., a part of the Commerce Department, calls “long-lived TV shows” — ones that provide a steady stream of income, like “Seinfeld” reruns — will for the first time be counted as investment. That’s right — the ultimate show about nothing will now add billions to G.D.P.

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