Consumer and business confidence are at all-time highs. We have growth without inflation in the most competitive economy in the world. Banks are financially sturdier. The deficit is reduced to a rounding error. Capital investment is at a record.
Corporate profits rise at double-digit levels.
The chairman of the Federal Reserve has inspired worldwide confidence in the management of our monetary policy. So the '97 crash was really a market event, not an economic event. And, in the end, as Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan stated, the triggering collapse of currencies and stock markets in Southeast Asia could actually be salutary. Asia's troubles will reduce real growth in the United States, further dampening inflation and forestalling any need for the Federal Reserve to raise rates. Chase Research, among others, estimates that Asian weakness will cut U.S. real growth and consumer prices by half of 1 percent in the next two years.