The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has issued the following news release today: Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the “initial” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.4 percent.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers pointed out that America’s economy achieved 3 percent growth for the first time in 13 years in 2018 with the results of the 4th/Qtr. GDP numbers. Its Chairman, Kevin Hassett (who has spoken to the CIRT members at our conferences), made this 3% growth prediction “in the heat of the 2017 tax reform debate and was ridiculed by progressive economists . . . But the evidence of the last two years is that deregulation and tax reform spurred private capital investment exactly when a long-in-the-tooth expansion needed it to avoid recession.”