Economy Ended 2013 With Growth Still Strong, Data Suggest

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[URL="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/30/268766011/economy-ended-2013-with-growth-still-strong-data-suggest"]NPR Link[/URL]

[quote=NPR]The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 3.2 percent annual rate in fourth-quarter 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday morning.

Coming on the heels of the third quarter's even better 4.1 percent pace, the news suggests the economy finished 2013 in better shape than it had been a year earlier.

A comparison to the last half of 2012 tells that story. In third-quarter 2012, gross domestic product expanded at a 2.8 percent annual pace. In fourth-quarter 2012, growth basically came to a standstill: GDP expanded at a meager 0.1 percent annual rate.

Another positive sign: Reuters notes that while the estimated 3.2 percent growth in the last three months of 2013 was "a slowdown from the third-quarter's brisk 4.1 percent pace, it was a far stronger performance than earlier anticipated." The growth also came despite the 16-day-long partial shutdown of the federal government in October. Reuters says "robust" consumer spending and exports boosted the economy. The data, by the way, are "seasonally adjusted" to hopefully account for typical fluctuations — such as holiday shopping — and reflect the "real" economic activity.[/quote]

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Let's hope it stays this way for a while.