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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

One Economy to Rule Them All...

... is one of the category names for posts at Brothers Judd. The economy they're referring to is the economy of the United States and right now I definitely have to agree with them.

It's amazing to me that we can achieve this level of GDP growth with the current global political climate. The preliminary estimate for the first quarter 2006 is 4.8% annualized real growth. Coupled with the previous 3 quarters the growth was 3.5%. Those are really excellent numbers, even for really wonderful economic environments.

But consider what happened in those 12 months. Several devastating hurricanes, continued war in Iraq (and Afghanistan), already high oil prices increasing an additional $10 per barrel to nearly $70 per barrel, the presidents popularity plummeting (though this may be due to the other factors), rising interest rates, the imminent collapse of a housing bubble (supposedly), a series of political scandals (Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Tom Delay, etc.), huge trade deficits (investment surpluses), and sizeable federal deficits.

If the economy can do that well during periods like that, what growth would we have if the circumstances became more favorable?

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