Q1 GDP, When Less-Bad Is Just Less-Bad

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 3:50AM EDT · Published May 29, 7:41AM EDT

This morning came the Q1-2009 revision to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product from the Commerce Department, and the recession is still going. The original figure of -6.1% GDP was revised to a lower -5.7%. This sounds better on the surface until you compare it to the Dow Jones estimates showing an expectation for a reading of ‘only’ -5.5% for the quarter.

The largest components for drops continue to be in domestic investments, which includes fixed investment, non-residential, structures, residential, and even equipment and software. The Commerce Department also noted additional weakness remaining in services for export and import.

While we have been in the “looking for less-bad” camp, this is still hard to get excited about. At least it wasn’t worse than the original dismal report.

It is probably soon to jump to this notion, particularly when we are discussing economic reading revisions. But at some point in the next few weeks to months, the forward looking data is going to need to be looking higher ahead rather than just the continued notion of “less-bad is good enough.”

Jon C. Ogg
May 29, 2009

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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.