MARKED DOWN

U.S. Fourth-Quarter Growth Revised Down Sharply

Growth rate revised down to 2.2 percent.

The U.S. economy slowed much more than previously thought in the fourth quarter, growing at a rate of 2.2 percent, the Commerce Department has announced. That rate was down from the 2.6 percent pace estimated in February. Reuters reported that the reduced revision to fourth-quarter GDP was due to markdowns to consumer and business spending as well as government outlays. For all of 2018, the economy grew 2.9 percent—the strongest since 2015 and an improvement from the 2.2 percent charted in 2017. But there are reportedly signs that the slowdown in growth from the fourth quarter has persisted early in the first quarter.