02/25/2005
Fourth quarter growth was better than the government’s original estimate, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
The government said the economy grew at an upwardly revised 3.8 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2004. The estimate a month ago was 3.1 percent.
The Gross Domestic Product is used to measure the nation’s economic health and measures the values of all goods and services produced in the U.S.
The improvement comes thanks to more spending by businesses on capital equipment and on building up their inventories. Also, the trade deficit did not take as severe a toll as analysts originally thought.
For all of 2004, the economy expanded by 4.4 percent.
