In their first “Preliminary” estimate of the US GDP for the fourth quarter of 2015, the  Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the economy was growing at a +0.69% annualized rate, down -1.30% from the third quarter

All of the key line items in this report showed meaningful deterioration relative to the third quarter. The reported growth in consumer spending was less than half of that recorded during the prior quarter. The growth in fixed investments nearly disappeared, as did growth in governmental spending. Exports continued to crater, showing outright contraction.

In fact, the only good news was that the ongoing inventory contraction weakened, while imports were less of a drag on the rest of the economy (the result of both lower oil prices and generally weakening demand). As we have mentioned a number of times before, the BEA’s treatment of inventories can introduce noise and seriously distort the headline number over short terms — which the BEA admits by also publishing a secondary headline that excludes the impact of inventories. But even this BEA “bottom line” (their “Real Final Sales of Domestic Product”) was less than half of what was reported for the prior quarter.

One bright spot was that household income was reported to have grown during the quarter. Real annualized per capita disposable income was reported to be $38,445 per annum, up $197 from the previous quarter. The household savings rate rose to 5.4% — up +0.2% from the prior quarter.

For this revision the BEA assumed an annualized deflator of 0.82%. During the same quarter (October 2015 through December 2015) the inflation recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in their CPI-U index was somewhat lower at 0.47%. Over estimating inflation results in pessimistic growth rates, and if the BEA’s “nominal” data was deflated using CPI-U inflation information the headline growth number would be a somewhat better +1.04%.