“We have a GDP, on Friday – it got very little mention, although I guess in the business areas it did. But it got, I think, very little mention. 2.6 is a number that nobody thought they’d see for a long period of time…. And 2.6 is an unbelievable number, announced on Friday.”
It’s hard to say with confidence whether Trump has any idea what the GDP is or what the quarterly reports show, but 2.6% growth is clearly not an “unbelievable number.” It’s actually quite believable.
Indeed, when the president says “nobody” expected to see quarterly growth of 2.6 “for a long period of time,” that plainly ridiculous. As recently as last fall, which really isn’t that long ago, we saw 2.8% growth.
Throughout the Obama era, most notably after the Great Recession ended, we saw plenty of individual quarters in which growth topped 4% and, at one point, 5%. Barack Obama didn’t do much to pat himself on the back, and the Democratic White House didn’t tout the figures as “unbelievable.” They were simply seen as evidence of a domestic economy that was growing steadily.
What’s more, given the fact that Trump hasn’t approved any major economic legislation, every time he celebrates the economic news from the first half of his first year in office, he’s really just touting the economy he inherited from his predecessor.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-...des-the-basics-economic-data?cid=sm_fb_maddow
It’s hard to say with confidence whether Trump has any idea what the GDP is or what the quarterly reports show, but 2.6% growth is clearly not an “unbelievable number.” It’s actually quite believable.
Indeed, when the president says “nobody” expected to see quarterly growth of 2.6 “for a long period of time,” that plainly ridiculous. As recently as last fall, which really isn’t that long ago, we saw 2.8% growth.
Throughout the Obama era, most notably after the Great Recession ended, we saw plenty of individual quarters in which growth topped 4% and, at one point, 5%. Barack Obama didn’t do much to pat himself on the back, and the Democratic White House didn’t tout the figures as “unbelievable.” They were simply seen as evidence of a domestic economy that was growing steadily.
What’s more, given the fact that Trump hasn’t approved any major economic legislation, every time he celebrates the economic news from the first half of his first year in office, he’s really just touting the economy he inherited from his predecessor.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-...des-the-basics-economic-data?cid=sm_fb_maddow