Fourth-Quarter GDP: Worse and Worse

Take this morning’s report on international trade, which showed the U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly widening to $57.2 billion in November from $56.6 billion the previous month...
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economist Michael Feroli: “The surprise leaves foreign trade subtracting almost one percentage point from growth, which puts our forecast for real GDP growth in [the fourth quarter] currently at -6.0%,” he wrote in a note to clients.
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A decline of 6% is more of the magnitude seen in the deep double-dip recession in 1980 and 1981-82. In the second quarter of 1980, GDP fell at a 7.8% rate, then rebounded sharply at the end of the year. In the first three months of 1982, GDP posted another large decline of 6.4%. The largest postwar GDP decline thus far occurred in the first quarter of 1958, an annualized drop of 10.4% during a sharp but short eight-month recession
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/12/11/fourth-quarter-gdp-worse-and-worse/