Buckle your seatbelts, Heather Long of the Washington Post is looking for a way to downgrade the Trump economy
Is this economy too good to be true?
The U.S. economy again defied expectations in April, as another month of strong hiring and falling unemployment forced experts to reevaluate just how good the economy can get — and how long the current expansion can last.
Employers added 263,000 new jobs last month, a record 103 straight months of job growth, and the official unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest since 1969, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The latest piece of good news comes accompanied by strong wage growth, hot stock markets and a first-quarter growth report last week that smashed expectations. Equally noteworthy is what economists aren’t seeing: the high levels of inflation that have accompanied previous expansions.
So, things are going pretty well, eh? Sure, there are a few things to work on, but, even with continuing automation, companies are hiring. Businesses are being created. Others are expanding. Gross domestic product is blowing the blase’ Obama GDP away. No one is talking about the massive, historic numbers of people who dropped out of the labor market like under the previous White House resident. We’re even seeing the return of some manufacturing jobs. So, of course
As the economy continues to grow past what many predicted was possible, some analysts and officials are wondering if the current state of the economy is too good to be true — and that experts must be missing warning signs.
Some expressed concerns about rising debt after the Trump administration undertook heavy borrowing to fund tax cuts and additional government spending to boost growth. President Trump is actively pushing for more, including a $2 trillion infrastructure package, additional military spending and extra stimulus from the Federal Reserve.
Funny, we weren’t treated to “concerns” while Obama was getting his massive Stimulus, borrowing from China, doing smaller stimulus after stimulus, adding $9 trillion to the debt, etc. But, the media does this every time the economy is roaring during a Republican presidency.
But few, if any, deny the remarkable overall strength of the U.S. economy.
“ ‘Spectacular’ is the only way to describe this jobs report,†said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Loyola Marymount University and SS Economics. “It is hard to believe that this 10-year-old recovery keeps pumping out home runs.â€
Previous eras of such economic performance ended painfully. The prosperity of the 1960s was followed by runaway inflation in the 1970s; the long expansion of the 1990s burst along with the tech bubble; and the gains of the 2000s ended when a collapsing housing bubble spiraled into a global financial crisis and the worst recession in generations.
“Things are great, doom starts soon!” And they’ll blame it on Trump. It’s like they want doom to happen.
