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Today, the government released its first report on fourth-quarter GDP growth. They released a GDP report at the end of each month, so this report will be revised twice more.

According to today’s report, the economy grew by 1.1% (annualized) for the last three months of 2005. That’s pretty bad and it’s about half of what economists were expecting.

Until now, the economy had delivered over 3.3% growth for ten straight quarters. So I guess we shouldn’t be too greedy. Also, this was positive growth so we can say that the economy isn’t receding.

The economy has grown at a faster rate over the last 3-1/2 years than it did during the 1990’s.

Reuters is declaring: "GDP growth at weakest in three years." That’s accurate, but that headline can be used, on average, once every three years. For any set of 12 quarters, one will have to be the weakest. Of course, only three quarters ago we were being warned about the "Slowest GDP growth in 2 years."

Posted by edelfenbein at January 27, 2006 9:55 AM