That tricky GDP

According to convention, when government at any level spends money, it contributes to Gross Domestic Product, GDP. The Bureau of Economic Analysis calculates GDP periodically, and Richard Daughty, the Mogambo Guru, vents about its methodology and conclusions. In its most recent report, the second-quarter GDP reflected "negative contributions" from private-sector components, but the BEA hastens to add the "good" news. Mogambo:

For some reason, I think that we are supposed to be calmed that these losses "were partly offset by positive contributions from federal government spending and state and local government spending." Gaaaaaahhhh!

Since I find it hard to express the horror I feel as a result of GDP falling while government spending is increasing, I will not try, and instead focus on the arcane handling of imports which, of course, seems perverse, in that imports are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, so that when imports increase, GDP decreases.

Not this time, though! You can tell by the way the birds have stopped singing and the world seems to have caught its collective breath that GDP went down even more than you think because imports decreased, too, which means that, again seemingly perversely, GDP was registered as having an increase as a result, when, in fact, everyone has been laid off and bankrupted as we die a horrible economic death, screaming in financial pain from letting the filthy Federal Reserve create so much money and credit all those years . . .