Yesterday’s GDP report was treated – by the administrations and its supporters in and out of the media – as an outlier. A good number would have been 3 percent growth, which is what the experts at places like Goldman Sachs had been predicting back when the quarter was still young and hopes were high. Then, the first report from the Commerce Department had the economy treading water, barely, at 0.1 percent growth. Prior to the revision released yesterday by Commerce, expectations were for a negative number in the half of a percent range.

It came in at negative one percent.