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It's now "official" : Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show - BL, 2009 July 31, by Bob Willis The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.
The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said today in Washington.
“The current downturn beginning in 2008 is more pronounced,” Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press briefing this week. The revisions were in line with past experience in which initial figures tended to underestimate the severity of contractions during their early stages, he said.
The updated statistics also showed that Americans earned more over the last 10 years and socked away a larger share of that cash in savings. The report signals the process of repairing tattered balance sheets following the biggest drop in household wealth on record may be further along than anticipated.
Spending Slumps
Consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, decreased 1.8 percent in last year’s fourth quarter from the same period in 2007, exceeding the prior estimate of a 1.5 percent drop. Purchases also began sinking sooner than previously projected, registering their first decline at the start of 2008 rather than in the second half. .....
Today’s updates are part of comprehensive revisions that take place about every five years and are more extensive than the changes announced at this time each year. Figures as far back as 1929 can be revised.
Over the most recent period, the third quarter of 2008 underwent one of the biggest changes, going from a 0.5 percent decrease in gross domestic product to a 2.7 percent drop. The new reading better illustrates the effect the September collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. had on the economy and credit markets. .....
Politically, it makes sense to revise down last year's numbers, including Q1 of this year, as it all will fall under "Bush's fault" and "inheritance" categories, as well as making any rebound (or deceleration in the rate of fall) of the economy look stronger for Obama and his "strong economic policies," which include stimulus and CARS etc. and for which he is already taking credit.

The revisions were in line with past experience in which initial figures tended to underestimate the severity of contractions during their early stages, he said.

On the one hand, this statement that "revisions were in line with past experience" says that this is an understood developement thus, conveniently, explaining how Obama/Biden/Dems were "off" in their projection of how fast the "stimulus" would work it's non-existent magic. On the other hand, this also means that the analysis of the economy by the Dems should have included this trend "to underestimate the severity of contractions during the early stages."

The Dems will get a large portion of their registered members to accept this "revisement" (and even that will soon lose some support) and blame Bush but the Independents (especially) and registered Pubbies (delusional but coming home) that gave a chance are not going back into the D column. They can clearly see by now that the stimulus was never created to stimulate the economy as a whole but the government sector to the detriment of the private.

The bottomline: If this particular revising of economic activity is so typical in recessionary times then the Dems were negligent in not factoring it in i.e. strong tax cuts aimed towards the job creaters, particuarly small businesses, to immediately jumpstart the economy.