On the face of it, the economic update that the US government is releasing on Friday should be a big yawn. Economists expect the revised numbers to confirm what we know already - that gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of just 1 per cent in the final three months of 2015.
But it would be a mistake to dismiss the release - even if you're off from work for the Easter holiday. That's because the US government also will be publishing its first estimate of what happened to company profits in the period. And the news isn't expected to be pretty.
Pre-tax earnings probably fell 9.5 per cent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, after dropping 5.1 per cent in the third, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase in New York. That would be the biggest decline since the 31 per cent free fall in the closing months of 2008 during the height of the financial crisis.
Profits last quarter probably were unusually depressed by a $20.8 billion penalty payment by BP to settle claims over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But even after stripping out that one-time charge, earnings likely still fell about 5 per cent, by JPMorgan's reckoning.
The risk is that they'll respond to the margin squeeze by cutting back on hiring and spending, leading to a recession.