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How Bad is that Economy?

I find negative headlines on Google News, regarding the US economy: US durable goods’ orders plunge (Reuters), Greenspan gets high marks, not US economy (Business Times) "Three-quarters of those surveyed rate the current economy as fair or poor,"

Some articles note the 3.8% growth this quarter, but they split over what this means: still on a solid growth track, or slowdown coming?

But my favorite take on the economy is found at BizzyBlog, who asks When is this economy going to get some respect?

So when was the last time the economy expanded faster than 3% for 10 straight quarters?

It didn’t happen during the 1990s (the longest streak was eight).

It last happened during the 13 quarters from 1Q 1983 through 1Q 1986. Not coincidentally, a president who believed in lowering taxes to stimulate economic growth was in charge the last time it happened.

So despite being at war, despite devastating storms, and despite legislative and regulatory drags on the economy like Sarbanes-Oxley, this has been most consistently growing economy in almost 20 years.

Not only that, the US economy has NEVER had a streak of more than 7 quarters of 3.0% or greater annualized growth at any other time in the 58 years that quarterly GDP statistics have been kept!

Why is there any question about whether Supply-side economics works? Probably because the pubic in general is uneducated enough to entertain such questions, and because precious few politicians make any attempt to enact the principle of increased savings in times of prosperity. The whole nation, from top to bottom, runs on the principle that if you have a dollar, you should spend two - which is the basis of most of our current economic fears, from the real estate bubble to the impending inflation of all non-real estate items.

But at the heart, the Laffer Curve is real and Supply-side economics does work. Respect this economy!