Posted on 02/02/2018 9:56:40 AM PST by markomalley
Economists are predicting 2018 GDP growth that completely blows even President Donald Trump’s expectations out of the water.
The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank is predicting 5.4 percent GDP growth for the first-quarter of 2018, up over one percent from its original Jan. 29 first-quarter prediction. 5.4 percent growth would be the highest growth rate since the third quarter of 2003.
Trump promised during his 2016 campaign to bring about sustained 4 percent, or higher, GDP growth and create tens of millions of new jobs within his first term in office.
“We’re at 1 percent (GDP growth) and maybe going lower, believe it or not. Right now we’re at 1 percent. I think 4 percent is easily attainable,” Trump said.
Many economists doubted Trump’s promise and called him out for making claims they deemed dubious and unwarranted.
“I do not see how any examination of U.S. history could possibly support the Trump forecast as a reasonable expectation,” Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President, wrote in a May 2017 Washington Post op-ed.
“As a reminder, the Trump Treasury department claims that tax cuts will pay for themselves because the economy will grow at almost 3 percent a year for the next decade. This growth projection didn’t come from any model; it was just pulled out of … well, you fill in the rest,” Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote Sunday in The New York Times.
The U.S. economy grew at a 3.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter of 2017, posting the best back-to-back quarterly growth rates in three years. Fourth-quarter growth rates fell slightly to 2.8 percent.
Reaching 3 percent growth, sustained or otherwise, is no small achievement, considering the U.S. economy grew at a steady 2 percent rate over the past decade.
Probably the same economists and so-called experts who kept predicting Obama’s non-existing ‘Summers of Recovery’.
Then kept using the word ‘Unexpectedly’ about the bad economic news.
What’s Trump going to do? Build the Economy himself?
>>This growth projection didn’t come from any model; it was just pulled out of … well, you fill in the rest,” Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote
In fairness to Krugman, he KNOWS about pulling things out of his you know where.
ECONO-MISSEDS!.....................
Take this with a grain of salt. GDPNow uses the latest data relases to forecast GDP. It opened 4Q17 at 4.5% back in October. The advance estimate came in last week at 2.6%.
Just wait until the unexpected number gets revised
More about putting things in, probably.
“...Many economists doubted Trump’s promise...”
Not one of 0bozo’s economists predicted anything but economic disaster from Trump’s administration.
And yet now they claim that all success is due to 0.
Who in their right mind would call Krugman an ‘economist’?
True. He forgets Reagan’s tax cuts led to a real 3.6% GDP over 4 years plus millions of jobs. The journalism majors are the most liberal students in any college.
When you can’t lose your job for being wrong, you can say anything you like. They will suffer zero consequences for being so wrong.
What about Comrade Krugman? Where is he?
“The journalism majors are the most liberal students in any college.”
One of my cousins married a woman who has a Masters in Journalism.
She is by far the most liberal POS I have ever met. Snooty as hell to boot.
I just stay away from her.
Makes you wonder how someone with a PHD could be so stupid and wrong at the same time........
This is just one regional Fed. The Atlanta Fed also has a somewhat spotty history on economic projections. Not trying to be a wet towel, just adding perspective.
I would not, however, be surprised to see this GDP projection come to fruition. The Trump economy is just kicking into high gear
This is dumb. The 1st quarter growth is not 5.4%. Atlanta Fed’s GDPnow is a model which takes in many datapoints, and spits out a prediction. It doesn’t have the data it needs to model its data yet. This is like watching a batter go 3-for-5 on opening day, and predicting he’s going to hit .600 on the season.
Trump’s economy IS doing much better than liberal economists said it could. It’ll probably be going at about 3%, far better than Clinton’s 1.8%. And per capita, that means 2.3% vs. 0.9%. We don’t need nonsense to make us look silly.
Yes. As of yesterday, the forecast for 1Q18 is now 4.0%.
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