He said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg News that voting for more bond purchases was “still the right strategy.” 
 
 In Asia, all 14 economists in a Bloomberg News survey predict additional easing when the Bank of Japan (8301) releases new inflation forecasts on April 27. ‘Underlying Trend’ 
 
 Surveys “have shown a more positive picture, and we believe these give a more accurate indication of the underlying trends,” Chief Economist David Kern said in a statement today. The last time Britain experienced a double-dip recession, defined as consecutive quarterly drops in GDP before the economy had recovered output lost in the previous recession, was 1975. Pay growth slowed to 1.1 percent in the three months through February, less than a third of the inflation rate. The U.S. Federal Reserve will release its policy statement at around 12:30 p.m. today in Washington, and its forecasts for interest rates, growth, inflation and unemployment at 2 p.m. Policy makers will probably repeat their plan to keep the benchmark rate low at least through late 2014, economists say. The U.K. economy shrank in the first quarter as Britain slid into its first double-dip recession since the 1970s, forcing Prime Minister David Cameron to defend his spending cuts in Parliament. That year, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was in office and Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the opposition Conservatives. There's better news on the UK economy out of the CBI, whose monthly survey showed confidence among Britain's manufacturers improving markedly this month. The Confederation of British Industry’s quarterly gauge of factory optimism surged to 22 from minus 25 in January. Separate surveys this month showed that growth in services, manufacturing and construction accelerated in March. An extra public holiday in June to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s 60 years on the throne may also depress economic output in the second quarter. Confidence among executives and consumers in the economic outlook in the region fell this month, economists in a Bloomberg survey said before data tomorrow. Thatcher Elected 
 
 Britain, the first Group of Seven country to report output for the first quarter, was hit hard by the financial crisis that erupted in 2007 and GDP is still 4.3 percent below its pre- recession peak in early 2008. “The one thing that would make the situation even worse would be to abandon our credible plan and deliberately add more borrowing and even more debt,” he said in a statement. The fall in GDP from the fourth quarter was due to a 3 percent drop in construction, the most since the first quarter... Read More 
 
 The fall in GDP from the fourth quarter was due to a 3 percent drop in construction, the most since the first quarter of 2009, and a 0.4 decline in industrial production. UK drops into recession after first quarter GDP came in at -0.2 
 
 My colleague Graeme Wearden is embedded at Church House in Westminster for the Office for National Statistics press briefing on UK GDP for the first quarter of 2012. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 31 economists was for 0.3 percent growth from a year earlier. “The data were bad, and that supports the view that the Bank of England will do a final 25 billion pounds of quantitative easing in May.” 
 
 Bank of England policy maker David Miles had signaled yesterday that today’s result was possible, saying in an interview with Bloomberg News that a negative number “wouldn’t be a great surprise.” 
 
 U.K. 10-year gilts advanced immediately after the data were published before easing again. The economy shrank by 0.3% in the last quarter of 2011, so a second quarter of contraction would signal we are back in recession.
– More bad news for Britain's beleaguered government: The country slid back into recession in the first quarter of this year, according to figures released today. The economy shrank for the second straight quarter, marking the first "double-dip" recession, in which GDP falls before output lost in the previous recession is recovered, since the mid-70s, Bloomberg reports. The British economy shrank 7.1% in the 2008-2009 recession and recovery since has been weak and fitful. The new decline was caused by falling activity in the construction and industrial sectors and stagnation in the services sector. "The dip in activity is small but massively significant," notes Larry Elliot at the Guardian. "With the government up to its eyeballs in the phone-hacking scandal and with local elections looming, the timing could hardly have been worse for David Cameron." Spain has also plunged back into recession, while other major European countries have yet to report GDP data from the first quarter of this year.