GOSH, OUR LANDINGS LOOK LIKE BOOMS (via Kevin Whited):

The Dangerfield Economy: The current robust economy and the Bush administration policies that underpin it get no respect. (Victor A. Canto, 2/16/07, National Review)

By any objective measure, the U.S. economy continues to perform in a more-than-respectable manner. Growth since the Bush tax-rate cuts of mid-2003 has averaged more than 3.6 percent. Historically sound growth. Since 2003, the Fed's favorite measure of inflation, the rate of change of the PCE price index, has increased at a 2 percent annual rate. Historically low inflation. On a trailing four-quarter basis, the U.S. economy has enjoyed 18 consecutive quarters of double-digit corporate-profit gains. Our companies are healthy and getting healthier. Since the beginning of 2003, the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, has gained 78 percent on a total-return basis. American investors, some 100 million or so, are making serious hay.

In times past, people would label this an era of unprecedented economic prosperity. Yet as I read the financial pages, I'm hard pressed to find any credit being given to either the economy or the policies that have delivered it:

"Extend the President's tax cuts beyond 2009 and 2010, and the fiscal hole is enormous. Let them expire and the tax increases could derail the economy."

"The President's budget and economic polices count on continued good luck."

"If the U.S. economy keeps growing like it is, Rodney Dangerfield is going to rise from the dead and file a patent claim."

US economic data point to soft landing (Eoin Callan in Washington, Saskia Scholtes in New York and Doug Cameron in Chicago, February 16 2007, Financial Times)

New US construction activity slowed sharply last month as home starts fell to a 10-year low, fresh figures showed on Friday in a sign that a soft landing in the housing sector is still not certain.

Work on new homes dropped by 14 per cent to 1.4m in January, although there were sings of stabilisation ahead as applications for building permits fell a modest 2.8 per cent.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 16, 2007 4:05 PM