GDP Contracts Much Less Than Feared

Interesting bit of babble this morning about the economy. All morning I was hearing a couple things - first, that stocks were expected to jump out of the gate higher thanks to really good earnings news from Amazon.com, but that they would likely falter due to the expected 5.5% decline in GDP.

Well, the advance report (expect it to change one way or the other over the next few months) is out and it's much better than feared - a 3.8% drop. As Briefing.com notes, this still isn't good news, but it is "better than expected" news.

World markets are in rough shape as they traded based on the -5.5 guess as well as their own less hardy economies.