Forecasting the Bush Boom
A team of economists at the University of Michigan predicts the U.S. economy will grow dramatically in 2004:

The U.S. economy will see its strongest growth since 1984 next year, a team of University of Michigan economists predicted in a report released Thursday. In the annual forecast from the university, Saul Hymans, Joan Crary and Janet Wolfe said Gross Domestic Product should increase by 5.1 percent in 2004.

"The economy starts the year 2004 with substantial momentum, propelled by real GDP advancing at a 5.8 percent rate in the second half of 2003," Hymans said in a statement. "The pace of output expansion remains vigorous next year, and employment responds to the strong economic growth."

The group predicted the country would gain 2.1 million jobs next year and 3.1 million in 2005. Unemployment is expected to fall from 6 percent this year to 5.4 percent next year and 4.8 percent in 2005.

I found it via Dustin Frelich, who says the Democrats's silence on the economic good news is "the greatest economic indicator of all."

UPDATE: Here are links to the University of Michigan press release and the economists' report summarized in a PDF file or in HTML.

Who should we blame for all this good news? I know! I know! I blame ... the Bush tax cuts!

UPDATE: Here's Robert J. Samuelson on the state of the economy, and what it means for Bush's reelection chances:

The U.S. economy seems to have just voted for George Bush. Almost all recent indicators favor the president's reelection: economic growth, rising at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter; jobs, increasing 286,000 since August; productivity, advancing at roughly a 5 percent rate since late 2001. Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for the forecasting firm Global Insight, has one of those equations that predict election results based on the economy and various political factors (incumbency, party affiliation). By the latest reports, Bush wins 56.6 percent of the 2004 vote.

And PoliPundit was pointing to this and also to a William Saletan column in which Saletan discusses a "revealing moment" from a recent Iowa debate involving the Democratic presidential wannabees:

The other revealing moment was Edwards' pledge to create 5 million jobs in the first two years of his presidency. Any presidential candidate knows it takes more than two years to enact an economic policy and see it produce results of that size. In other words, the pledge doesn't reflect Edwards' confidence that he can grow those jobs. It reflects his confidence that the economy will grow those jobs anyway. I don't suppose he'll credit them to the president whose policies are already in effect.

Hah! Read the whole thing.