O COLAPSO DO IMPÉRIO :

YouTube VIDEO - Bloomberg News - Forbes - WSJ - clik1 clik2 clik3 clik4
EUA com PIB maquilado, diz que desabou 'apenas' 2,9%. 
The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter by the most since the depths of the last recession as consumer spending cooled. Gross domestic product fell at a 2.9 percent annualized rate, more than forecast and the worst reading since the same three months in 2009, after a previously reported 1 percent drop, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. It marked the biggest downward revision from the agency’s second GDP estimate since records began in 1976. 

The revision reflected a slowdown in health carespending. Consumers returned to stores and car dealerships, companies placed more orders for equipment and manufacturing picked up as temperatures warmed, indicating the early-year setback was temporary. Combined with more job gains, such data underscore the view of Federal Reserve policy makers that the economy is improving and in less need of monetary stimulus. The first-quarter slump is “not really reflective of fundamentals,” said Sam Coffin, an economist at UBS Securities LLC in New York and the best forecaster of GDP in the last two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “For the second quarter, we’ll see some weather rebound and a return to more normal activity after that long winter.”
.
Mas pela inflação real de 6%, queda do PIB  é de 12%.
That’s right, the government is assuming that inflation is running at a rate of 1.27%. To anyone who eats (beef, eggs, and citrus prices are up 9%, 5%, and 22%, respectively, in the past year) or drives (gasoline is at record highs in many states) this seems just a tad on the optimistic side. As CMI noted, MIT’s Billion Prices Project, which monitors real-time pricing across the Internet, is rising at a nearly 4% rate, which for most people probably feels more accurate.

So why is Washington using such deceptive inflation numbers when calculating GDP? Because 1) it makes the economy look bigger, which makes US economic policy look more effective and its architects more competent, and 2) they can get away with it. Most media accounts of this and other economic statistics simply repeat the headline number without considering how it was calculated, so what the government says is exactly what most people hear. Only in the sound money community is this debated, and that’s far too small a forum to affect general perception. But an effective lie is still a lie, and this one is a whopper.