"Every part of the U.S. economy - consumer spending, business investment, housing, government purchases, even exports - declined in the first three months of 1991, confirming the country's slide into its first recession since 1982, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.</br></br>The department said the gross national product, the country's output of goods and services, fell at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter after adjustment for inflation. The drop followed a decline at the rate of 1.6 percent in the final three months of last year.</br></br>The extended fall in economic activity left economists divided yesterday on how long the downturn might last.</br></br>Many forecasters, including those in the Bush administration, expect the recession to hit bottom sometime during the current quarter, but some other economists saw details of yesterday's report - particularly a large decline in business spending on new plants and equipment - as an indication that the recovery will not begin until later.</br></br>""It was a broadly based decline in economic activity,"" said Norman Robertson, chief economist at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, ""and it looks as though there will be another decline in the second quarter."""
This example is yes.