Current GDP Growth Isn't Anything Special

Real gross domestic product has now grown at an estimated annual rate of 3 percent or more in the U.S. for two quarters in a row (3 percent in the third quarter, 3.1 percent in the second). President Donald Trump and his eldest son seem to think -- or at least seem to want others to think -- that this is the fastest growth the nation's economy has seen in many years.

It is not: In the second and third quarters of 2014, for example, real GDP growth was 4.6 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively. But that spurt didn't last, with growth averaging just 2.2 percent a year over the course of this expansion so far. Three percent growth would be better than that, for sure, but two quarters don't tell us much. Quarterly GDP growth rates are volatile, meaning that it can be hard to detect signals in the quarterly noise: