UPDATE: OBAMA BLAMES SPENDING CUTS, HURRICANE – US economy shrinks, 1st time in 3 ½ years

Wow this is some recovery Barack Obama has implemented. Not only have we been dealing with a stagnant economy over the last few years with growth numbers near 1%, but now, just a couple months after Obama’s reelection, we find out the economy is no longer growing at all. It’s shrinking!

But didn’t Colin Powell say last night that the economy is recovering? Ugh, these imbeciles.

YAHOO NEWS – The U.S. economy shrank from October through December for the first time since the recession ended, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles. The decline occurred despite faster growth in consumer spending and business investment.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That’s a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter and the first contraction since the second quarter of 2009.

Economists said the surprise decrease in the nation’s gross domestic product wasn’t as bad as it looked. The weakness was primarily the result of one-time factors. Government spending cuts and slower inventory growth subtracted a total of 2.6 percentage points from growth.

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UPDATE: Here we go again with the blame game again. This time Obama is blaming a natural disaster an spending cuts. Seriously:

YAHOO NEWS – The White House on Wednesday blamed the devastation from Superstorm Sandy and disruptions from deep scheduled spending cuts for the surprise 0.1 percent drop in gross domestic product (GDP) in the fourth quarter of 2012. It was the first such contraction since early 2009 when the country was in the grips of the Great Recession.

The chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, said in a post on the official White House blog that the bad news came “amid signs that Hurricane Sandy disrupted economic activity and Federal defense spending declined precipitously, likely due to uncertainty stemming from the sequester.”

That law will slash some $1.2 trillion in spending over 10 years by targeting domestic and defense programs with across-the-board cuts. Obama and Republicans in Congress have been starkly at odds over how best to replace the sequester with less disruptive debt-battling measures. The president has said spending cuts must be paired with tax revenue increases, something Republicans oppose.

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