maybe the perception is regulation is holding me back. but perception become reality, especially in a small business. they hear everybody talking about that so now that s reality and they are not going to hire. they think maybe i will get regulated. the out of every recession you have seen small business, entrepreneurs bring us out of it. new innovation and technology. if we do not have that backing this slow economy how do we ever grow? that s troubling. there is another underlying factor. with europe there is a lot of uncertainty about what s going to happen in the our or ozone and it lumps from mini crisis to mini crisis. that is the biggest trading area in the world it s bigger than the u.s. economically. what s going to happen there people who say it won t are wrong. people are saying america will be immune. so that then this housing.
economy came out just minutes ago. christine roman has those and then zain verjee looking at reaction to a deal made on the debt crisis and alison kosik at the new york stock exchange where your 401(k) could enjoy a big day. christine, let s go ahead and start with you. before we focus on the big debt deal, if you don t mind, let s talk about what this means. tell us about the economy and the good news we re getting. all right, first of all, gdp. how the economy grew in the most recent quarter. the third quarter. 2.5% kyra. that s twice as fast as it was in the second quarter. it shows you there was a pickup in economic activity in the third quarter. and that is the best in a year. so, kyra, that tells us that the economy is doing a little better, it needs to be better than 2.5%, but that is better than it has done in about a year. that is good news about where the economy is going right now. the overnight deal on the european debt crisis. let s talk about how this has im