The US economy came to a virtual standstill in the final three months of 2007 as the deepest slump in the real estate market for a quarter of a century acted as a brake on expansion, according to data released in Washington today.
Official figures showed that gross domestic product increased at an annualised rate of 0.6% between October and December, only half as fast as Wall Street had been expecting.
Today's news meant that the US economy grew by 2.2% in 2007 as a whole - the weakest expansion seen since the 1.6% growth recorded in 2002, when the economy was affected by the dotcom collapse and the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
The weakness of the data was seen by Wall Street as clinching evidence that the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, will cut interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 3% tonight in a bid to boost flagging growth.
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