Silver Lining in the GDP Report

Someone get President Bush a copy of the latest GDP report as he is telling a Missouri audience about the alleged highest real GDP growth in 20 years. I guess he’s still talking about that temporary spike in the annualized rate for 2003QIII (which is no longer being reported as 8.2% but only 7.4%). For 2004QII, the annualized growth rate was reported to be 3.0% today.

So what’s the silver lining? For those of us who lament the low national savings rate, it is of some comfort that real investment grew at 12.8% and real exports grew at 13.2% (annualized, of course).