Analysts have been predicting a bleak economic outlook in the US for the past few months or so now but Americans shouldn’t fret. After a prediction of about 1.5% growth for the last quarter of 2023 and a forecast of recession for the first quarter of 2024 with 0.2% growth, they couldn’t have been more wrong. The economy boasted a staggering 4.9% annualized growth rate in the final quarter of 2023. This occurred in large part thanks to massive consumer spending even in the face of the biggest interest rates in 23 years. Singapore is the only other industrialized country that spent more on Covid stimulus from 2020 to 2021 and it’s showing in consumer habits. People didn’t have the opportunity to spend and now that they’re back out with more money, they’re sending it every which way.
The annualized GDP actually slowed to a growth rate of 3.3% for the final quarter of 2023, but this proves us abreast of the rest when realizing that the combined GDP of the 20 countries that use the euro grew at just an annualized rate of 0.1% in the third quarter last year. Just as well, the UK is growing at an annualized rate of just 0.2% while Japan’s economy shrank by 2.1% from the year prior. Whenever there’s a boom like this, there’s an impending leveling out. However, as always with the US economy, who really knows?
