A trio of reports due Tuesday are expected to paint a bleak picture of the nation's housing market and the broader economy, as the deepening recession sends more companies lining up for a piece of the government's $700bn bailout fund.

Wall Street expects the gross domestic product, the country's total output of goods and services, fell at an annual rate of 0.5% in the July-September quarter. That would match the estimate for GDP made a month ago, but economists believe that small drop will be followed by a much larger plunge in the current October-December quarter.

The National Association of Realtors is expected to report that sales of existing homes in the U.S. for November fell 1.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.9m units, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Washington Post