Economic Insights – December 2017

The U.S. economy is now accelerating.  With less than one month to go in the fourth quarter, monthly data releases show real GDP growing at an annual rate of over 3 percent.  If that holds, it would make for three consecutive quarters of growth at an annual rate of over 3 percent.  Believe it or not, the last time that happened was 2004!

Retail sales, industrial production, and housing starts all came in substantially better than expected for October.  And while retail sales grew “just” 0.2 percent in October, that came on the back of .....