Attention all shoppers: Stocks are at an all-time high. Goldilocks lives. The economy could grow by 3 percent in Q3 after growing nearly 4 percent in Q2. Moreover, a highly competitive America is exporting at a 13 percent annual rate, including a 24 percent export gain to China, a 25 percent increase to South America, and a 15 percent export rise to Europe.Read it here.
Meanwhile, at lower tax rates, the growing economy threw off $2.6 trillion of tax revenues, bringing the FY 2007 budget deficit to only 1.2 percent of GDP or $163 billion. Tax collections for 2007 are roughly $550 billion above the prior FY 2000 peak.
Even spending in 2007 was held to 2.8 percent growth, with domestic spending less entitlement and security actually falling by nearly 6 percent from last year.
So I’d like to thank all you pessimists out there. Your wall of worry is actually driving stocks higher. You have been completely wrong. To quote former Sen. Fred Thompson (who quoted me during the Republican debate), it’s still “the greatest story never told.”
And in another matter regarding the Bush legacy, Bartle Bull writing in the Prospect argues that the war in Iraq is already won. We have defeated the Baathist insurgency, we have defeated al Qaeda, and the Shiite militias are abandoning military actions for political maneuvering. What remains is more on the order of Iraqi police work than American war.
With most Sunni factions now seeking a deal, the big questions in Iraq have been resolved positively. The country remains one, it has embraced democracy and avoided all-out civil war. What violence remains is largely local and criminal.Sounds like a win to me.
Read the whole thing here.
