Dec 20 2007
The Soaring Bush Economy
Words are meaningless, results are everything. For all the nay-sayers (right and left) regarding President Bush he has delivered this country one unbeatable economy in his tenure as President:
The Commerce Department released its final report on gross domestic product in the third quarter on Thursday, showing that the pace of GDP growth for the quarter was unrevised compared to the preliminary estimate.
The report showed that GDP increased at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter compared to the 3.8 percent growth seen in the second quarter. Economists had expected GDP growth to remain unchanged at 4.9 percent.
The GDP growth in the third quarter marked the fastest pace of growth since the third quarter of 2003, when GDP surged up 7.5 percent.
The acceleration in the pace of GDP growth compared to the previous quarter primarily reflected accelerations in exports, consumer spending, and private inventory investment.
Compassionate Conservatism works – Doh!
What has helped a lot is letting the dollar decline.
It made imports more expensive and exports cheaper.
Only bad thing is some of our debt holders are really not to happy getting paid off in cheaper dollars.
Oh well.
Merlin, it always amuses me to see all the handwringing about the Declining Dollar on CNN and similar outlets, when in fact they should be wringing their hands for the Euro’s, who are taking the economic beating.
Now of course we can’t let the dollar keep dropping without some long term nasty consequences, but the short term consequences are higher employment and economic growth. So why treat it like its such an awful thing?
And of course, if the dollar was strong but unemployment was heading up and growth was going down, every newspaper in the country (not to mention the Dem candidates) would be screaming about “gross economic mismanagement!” At least this way they’re stuck trying to criticize a sitution that’s almost impossible to criticize.
(btw, don’t anyone get me started on the Credit Crunch, which was created by banks getting way too greedy and ignoring credit standards that had been in place for decades, and calling that move “clever”)