At least they were better than the Q4 numbers, 6.3% drop.
With numbers that bad...I'll imagine we will see somewhere around 3% drop in Q2, maybe a point or two higher, but definitely not as bad as these numbers. People at least don't seem quite as freaked out as they have been the last few months, which may not be a major improvement, but is an improvement nonetheless. When you are heading off a cliff, even a few more feet of road between you and the cliff looks pretty damn good.
And at least the stock market appears to have bottomed out as well about a month ago. GDP growth turning around shouldn't be more than a few quarters behind. Q4 will almost definitely see positive numbers (not very hard to do considering how bad they were last year - worst in 26 years). We might see positive numbers in Q3 as well, but that is harder to predict.
Edit: Unemployment is a totally different story. We might not see that turn around until next year. It is often the first number to drop and the last number to recover. At least the stimulus bill will actually do a lot of good in this department as it just takes so long for unemployment numbers to go back down.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
