[BostonCard]

What am I missing? For the US on the plot, the horizontal seems right but for the vertical, how are we down only 10% for the first half of the year? Didn't the US GDP decline 5% first quarter and 30+% second quarter?

The US annualizes GDP changes, so that any change is projected to what it would be if sustained for a year.  So, a GDP loss of 32% in the second quarter means that GDP was about 8% lower than the first quarter (it actually comes out to 9.2% because of the math involved).  The bottom line is that the GDP in the first half of 2020 was about 10% lower than it had been in the last half of 2019.

BC

[BostonCard]

What am I missing? For the US on the plot, the horizontal seems right but for the vertical, how are we down only 10% for the first half of the year? Didn't the US GDP decline 5% first quarter and 30+% second quarter?

The US annualizes GDP changes, so that any change is projected to what it would be if sustained for a year.  So, a GDP loss of 32% in the second quarter means that GDP was about 8% lower than the first quarter (it actually comes out to 9.2% because of the math involved).  The bottom line is that the GDP in the first half of 2020 was about 10% lower than it had been in the last half of 2019.

BC