Going into the last week in January, economy watchers were expecting a blitz of reports to shed some light on the overarching question of the day: Are we in a recession? Fresh data on everything from housing and manufacturing to the labor markets and gross domestic product failed to answer the question definitively, but they tended to lean more toward the downside than the upside. What the latest indicators do say clearly is that U.S. economic growth essentially ground to a halt in the fourth quarter or last year, and it appears to be no better than dead in the water in the first quarter.
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