After a slow week for economic news -- but one that was no less dour than weeks past -- the release calendar picks up, with little relief.

Data from last week were largely overshadowed by President Obama’s inauguration and first few days in office, but that did not mask the fact that home-builder confidence continued to nosedive, pulling down building permits and starts and home values as tracked by the Federal Housing Finance Administration (formerly Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight) hit a record year-over-year decline. Nor did the inauguration hoopla slow the pace of unemployment claims as first time filings hit a 26-year high.

The change of administrations will not mean a change of direction for the numbers this week, though to be sure they will be the final numbers of the Bush Administration -- and not at all pretty.

Perhaps the best number we can hope for will be Monday’s proprietary FOX Business Shopping Cart, though it could though be downhill from there.

The highlight of the week will be Friday’s report on fourth-quarter Gross Domestic Product, which could seal the economic verdict of the Bush Administration. It's likely to show the steepest quarterly downturn since the beginning of 1982, and the first back-to-back quarters of negative growth since 1990-91.

(Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP is a short-hand definition of a recession, but we did not experience that during the 2001 recession and the National Bureau of Economic Research has determined a recession began in December 2007.)

GDP, economics textbooks tell us, is determined by a straightforward formula:

C+I+G-X

which translates to Consumption plus Investment plus Government spending less net exports (the trade deficit). Fourth-quarter GDP was buffeted by a sharp downturn in the trade deficit in November, but not enough to offset a plunge in consumer spending and investment, both residential and non-residential.

The extent of the native GDP -- whether it indeed is deeper than 1Q 1982 -- is almost secondary except to the extent that it suggests how deep a hole we’re in. There is no immediate prospect for a bounce to positive GDP growth in the first quarter. If first quarter GDP is negative -- and we won’t get the first numbers on it until next month -- it would be three consecutive quarters of negative growth for the first time since 1974.

In advance of Friday’s GDP we’ll get two forecasting indicators: the often overlooked -- at forecasters’ peril –--Chicago Fed National Activity Index and the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators report. The CFNA three-month moving average has been a reliable recession indicator with a value of less than -0.70 indicating serious economic contraction. The average has been below that level for 12 straight months. While the leading indicators will be the headline focus in the Conference Board report, the year-over-year change in a parallel report of coincident indicators signals mirrors GDP. That change has been negative for five straight months.

For the first time in several months, there will be little suspense or tension when the Federal Open Market Committee meets. The FOMC is widely expected to leave the target Fed Funds rate -- the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans -- unchanged from the historic low range of 0% to 0.25% set at the December meeting. The FOMC is constrained from lowering rates, since it is already scraping bottom; that it will not likely increase rates was signaled by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke two weeks ago when he said, “The Fed still has powerful tools at its disposal to fight the financial crisis and the economic downturn, even though the overnight federal funds rate cannot be reduced meaningfully further.”

Mark Lieberman is the senior economist for the Fox Business Network. Prior to joining FOX, he served as first vice president and manager of economic analysis and research at Washington Mutual in New York. Before that, he served as senior vice president at Dime Savings Bank of New York (which was later acquired by Washington Mutual), where he specialized in credit and risk management. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the New York Association for Business Economics. He has a degree in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.