by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
We just witnessed the largest quarterly GDP decline since the last financial crisis, and experts are warning that the figure for the second quarter will be far, far worse. In fact, as you will see below, one expert is telling us to brace ourselves for the worst economic numbers “in the post-World War II era”. On an annualized basis, U.S. GDP fell by 4.8 percent during the first quarter, and that was a bit worse than most economists were projecting. And economists were also surprised that consumer spending was down 7.6 percent and business investment was down 8.6 percent during January, February and March. Under normal circumstances, those would be absolutely horrible numbers, but these are not normal circumstances. Yes, January and February were relatively normal, but the coronavirus shutdowns began in March and that is why these numbers are so dismal.