Chart of the Day: GDP Growth in Q1

Real GDP plummeted 4.8 percent in the first quarter:

This is a little surprising: business lockdowns only started at the tail end of the quarter and shouldn’t have had a huge effect. This suggests that the economy may have been heading for a slide even before it got hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

The slowdown hit everywhere. Both personal consumption and private investment were down. Durable goods were down. Services were down. Fixed investment was down. Both imports and exports of services were down.

Among consumption of goods, the biggest drops were in autos and clothing. Among services, the biggest drops were in food, recreation, and health care. Among investment, the biggest drop was in business equipment.

All of this together suggests that the economy was on the edge of recession already, and both consumption and investment then cratered in response to fear of the coronavirus even before it had a concrete effect on the economy. Next quarter should be even worse.

On the other hand: I’ll point out yet again that it doesn’t feel like a typical economic implosion, does it? A drop of this magnitude would normally be accompanied by a huge amount of economic fear, but this time everyone knows exactly why the drop occurred and what has to happen to stop it. In the meantime, everyone also knows that massive government assistance is either here or on the way soon. Our fear right now isn’t truly economic, it’s fear of the virus. This means we can still get out of this with only moderate damage if we handle the pandemic itself properly.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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