The shrinking GDP

In the fourth quarter of 2008, the gross domestic product shrank at almost a 7% annual rate, much more than had previously been estimated:

The country’s gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate 6.2 percent in the last quarter of 2008, the steepest decline since the 1982 recession. Economists are expecting a similar drop in the first quarter of 2009.

“What a ghastly report,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “This will almost certainly be the longest postwar recession, and now potentially the deepest one as well.”

With the exception of government spending, every major component of the economy shrank. [emphasis added]

G.D.P., a measure of the country’s total output of goods and services, was previously estimated to have fallen 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. While economists and Wall Street analysts had been skeptical of that original figure, they had expected a revision closer to a 5.4 percent decline. The economy shrank 0.5 percent in the previous quarter.

So yeah, Bobby Jindal, let's just stop government spending, too. Wonder how much worse the number would have been if we'd done that?