The American economy slammed on the brakes in the beginning of
2014, as weaker exports and lower spending by businesses essentially brought
growth to a standstill.
At
0.1 percent, the pace of expansion in January, February and March was the
slowest since late 2012, and revealed another one of the periodic pauses in the
growth that has characterized the slow recovery of the last five years.
Many
experts had predicted a slowing in the first quarter of 2014, especially in the
wake of more robust growth in the second half of 2013 and very cold weather in
January and February, but the figures released by the Commerce Department on
Wednesday morning were still drastically below the 1.2 percent rate of
expansion that Wall Street had been expecting.
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article in the New York Times.