Joe Lavarnier

I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.

Disinflationary boom.

Steve, the last month when the data came out to markets, investors were surprised that the numbers were softer than expected.

And the argument was that it was temporary, that you'd see an acceleration or a payback, if you will, in December.

That did not happen.

The core CPI, which strips out food and energy, for example, the three-month rate of change remained at 1.6.

There are a lot of positives in the report.

We're going to make significant further progress, which is going to take a little bit of time.

So we counsel patients because we had a mess.

that we inherited.

But the point is, the numbers on the inflation side are trending powerfully in the right direction.

And of course, the boom aspect you see in the GDP numbers, near 5% private sector GDP the last two officially reported quarters.

The widely-filed Atlanta Fed has growth

over 5% for the fourth quarter.

That would take growth for the year, despite the weak Q1 when Biden was in office of over 3%.

So when we talk about a disinflationary boom, we're talking about surging GDP, rising incomes, and an inflation rate that starts to fall and doesn't preoccupy people's concerns.

If you take GDP, gross domestic product, and you strip out federal side, which to your point was booming on an unsustainable track over the previous four years, GDP in Q2 and Q3, President Trump's first two full quarters in office, the economy grew almost 5%.

GDP, excluding the government sector, grew actually 4.8% annualized over those two quarters.

Fast forward to the fourth quarter, which there was a government shutdown and people worried the economy would be depressed.

The Atlanta Fed has GDP growth predicted at 5.1%.