Originally posted by slammin.e28guy
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The Fiscal cliff
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It's mostly due to defense spending being cut.
First, it is important to note that this is the government's advance report, which will subsequently be revised several times. Growth in the third quarter was initially reported at just 2.0% before being revised up more than a percentage point. Second, the bad number is driven by a few one-off peculiarities in the data. Federal defence spending shrank at a striking 22% annual pace in the fourth quarter, knocking 1.28 percentage points off of growth. That was mostly (though not entirely) due to typical shifting of spending into the third quarter ahead of the end of the fiscal year in September. (Correspondingly, the 0.64 percentage-point defence contribution to growth in the third quarter was somewhat overstated.) A big change in private inventories also knocked 1.27 percentage points off of growth. Real final sales grew at more than a 1% annual pace for the quarter, suggesting that underlying demand continues to grow, albeit weakly.
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