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April 25th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda 
Andy Rain / EPA
The last time Britain suffered a double-dip recession was in 1975.
LONDON – Britain’s economy slid into its second recession since the financial crisis after official data unexpectedly showed a fall in output in the first three months of 2012, piling pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron’s embattled coalition government.
The Office for National Statistics said Britain’s gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 after contracting by 0.3 percent at the end of 2011, confounding forecasts for 0.1 percent growth.
The last time Britain suffered a double-dip recession was in 1975.
Most economists had expected Britain’s $2.4 trillion economy to eke out modest growth in the early 2012, but these forecasts were upset by the biggest fall in construction output in three years coupled with anemic service sector growth and a fall in industrial output.
Wednesday’s figures will be a deep blow for Britain’s Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition, which has slid in opinion polls since a poorly received annual budget statement in March and risks embarrassment at local elections on May 3. The government is also under pressure over revelations about its close relationship with media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.
The government desperately needs growth to achieve its overriding goal of eliminating Britain’s large budget deficit over the next five years.
Britain’s economy contracted by 7.1 percent during its 2008-2009 recession and recovery since has been slow, with headwinds from the eurozone debt crisis, government spending cuts, high inflation and a damaged banking sector.
The Bank of England has warned that there is a risk of another contraction in the second quarter of 2012, due to an extra public holiday. But unlike during the previous two quarters, it does not appear keen to provide further monetary stimulus through quantitative easing asset purchases, due to above-target inflation which looks stickier than before.
Consumers confident but wary about the economy
The BoE, and a number of private-sector economists, had argued before Wednesday that the underlying health of Britain’s economy was stronger than ONS data suggested, due to relatively upbeat private-sector surveys and a fall in unemployment.
The ONS’s preliminary estimates of GDP are the first released in the European Union, and are based partly on estimated data. On average, they are revised by 0.1 percentage points up or down by the time a second revision is published two months later, but bigger moves are not uncommon.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
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