Shrinky Dinks

The Commerce Department's final third quarter GDP numbers are out and surprise:  it's a final downward revision to just 2.2% growth from July to September.  But here's the real problem:

Business spending in the third quarter was weaker than the government had estimated last month. Business investment fell at a 5.9 percent rate instead of 4.1 percent, the department said.

A deeper than initially thought slump in the construction of nonresidential structures and stronger demand for imports, which overshadowed the growth in exports, held back growth in the third quarter, the report showed.

Nonresidential building activity dropped 18.4 percent in the third quarter rather than 15.1 percent, a reflection of the troubles in the commercial property market. That shaved 0.68 percentage points off GDP.

In other words, the CRE crash is really starting to hurt.  And the only thing that kept the country in positive was the stimulus package, which Republicans insisted we don't need and never did.