re: Third and final number for the 3rd quarter GDP.

quote:

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There's no credibility at risk as long as you simply say this (which is 100% true and makes sense since Presidential terms roughly begin at the start of the calendar year):

Barack Obama is the only President on record not to achieve 3% Real GDP growth in any calendar year of his presidency.

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How compelling would this argument be in 8 years if Trump doesn't do better than, say, 3.5? Or, what if we experience a recession at some point, and the average over the Trump years is like 2? Or what if, despite all our arguments about dynamic scoring, deficits get big and stay big compared to Obama's final 2 years, and we still fail to average 3?

I think each of these things are in the realm of reasonable possibility. And if any of them happen, you can be 100% certain the media will remind us all endlessly of the oversold promises of growth, about the failure of trickle-down, all of that.

You can say you disagree and that this is very, very unlikely, but I don't see how you can say there's no credibility at risk.

I had all digits rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent, so if you do the actual math, it could very well be 4.6%.

It will be very interesting to see if we can hit 4.0%. As much as I think Trump is doing what is best for the economy, it's also not lost on me the business cycle does just that - cycle - and the current recovery is pretty long in the tooth.

However, I also think the slow pace of the recovery during Obama's tenure could lend itself to an up cycle that is much longer in duration compared to past up cycles.

Thanks Obama