January 30, 2020

Chart of the Day: GDP Growth Ends 2019 on Ho-Hum Note

In the final quarter of 2019, real GDP grew 2.1 percent:

This is OK. It’s not great, but it’s OK, especially in the 128th month of an economic expansion. The fourth quarter results mean that we ended the year with annual growth of 2.3 percent:

Again, this is an OK number, but nothing to write home about. US economic growth has been remarkably steady since the end of the Great Recession, never breaking out of a range of 1.5-3.0 percent.

And for you political types who demand to know what this means for the election, it probably means nothing. Economic growth is good enough that it doesn’t provide Donald Trump with any big problems, but it’s low enough that he’s still vulnerable. Altogether, economic growth is probably a wash for the 2020 campaign.

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We've never been very good at being conservative.

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This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

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