Same Old, Same Old - Part 2

J: The second bit of good news in the latest BEA release is that real GDP picked up significantly in the second quarter of 2017 to 2.6 percent, to an actual level of $17.0 trillion. Real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) rose 2.8 percent, a nice increase from the 1.9 percent pace of the first quarter. They accounted for 1.93 percentage points of the growth in overall real GDP in the second quarter.

Of course, most countries in the world, other than China or India, would love to have managed real GDP growth of 2.1 percent a year for the past eight years. Faster growth would be nice for many reasons, but we should be grateful we're not facing the economic travails of most of Europe, Japan, and the overwhelming majority of less-developed countries.

The US economy is expected to keep growing for several more years. Don't worry about the next recession until you see the dreaded inverted Treasury yield curve persist for at least four months. That is not likely to happen until some time in the first half of 2020.