The American economy grew at only an 0.2 percent annual rate, The New York Times reports. Columnist Neil Irwin tries to make sense of it.
“The weak economic readings to start both this year and last reflect two consecutive years of unusually bad winter weather in heavily populated parts of the country, combined with evidence that the formulas used to adjust for the normal seasonal variations may be creating a distorted picture regarding the January-through-March quarter,” Irwin writes.