Will Powell save Biden?

IT GOES without saying that any American president would be pleased, perhaps would even rejoice, at the latest news reports: That the US economy grew rapidly in the fourth quarter of last year, advancing to a 6.9 per cent annual rate, for full-year growth of 5.7 per cent, the strongest in four decades.

Is this happening under the same President Joe Biden for whom many of us, only a few weeks ago, were preparing his political obituaries? Do we need to reassess our earlier "it's-over-for-Biden" expectations in light of the new numbers?

After all, putting those numbers in historical perspective, we can point out that the American economy has not grown that fast since 1984, during Republican President Ronald Reagan's fourth year in office.