It is not true that banks are no longer lending money to qualified homebuyers. The 30-year mortgage rate fell last week in the immediate wake of the government's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Meantime, real interest rates and inventories remain very low, "by past experience a promise of stronger growth ahead," Malpass said, adding, "Consumption growth slowed last winter as expected, creating pent-up demand. In the third-quarter GDP, real consumption will also get a boost from slower headline inflation."
The strongest pillar propping up the U.S. economy is exports. We have been selling a lot more of what we make and grow ($1.6 trillion annually), and that has contributed much to a stronger 3.3 percent GDP rate.
To those Obama Democrats who insist the United States doesn't make anything anymore, overseas sales of U.S. manufactured goods accounted for 81 percent of our total export growth.
Globally, the mood in overseas economies has turned gloomy, "but the actual data doesn't show a new collapse," Malpass said.
China's growth is expected to slow to 9.8 percent this year, down from nearly 12 percent last year. (Some slowdown.) European economies have slowed, "but not in the European Union as a whole."
One reason for the sour European mood was its strong growth in the first quarter and then its fall to earth. Germany, for example, grew at 5.2 percent, and then fell to minus 2 percent in the second.
In 1908, financier J.P. Morgan, who had helped steer the U.S. economy through many economic panics, said he always remembered the advice given to him by his father, a successful investment banker in his own right.
"Remember, my son, that any man who is a bear on the future of this country will go broke," the elder Morgan said. "There may be times when things are dark and cloudy in America. In such times and at all times, remember that the growth of that vast country will take care of all."
There are plenty of reasons to be bullish about America now as then. We've still got a lot of growing ahead of us.