From @WSJ editors this AM:

“Yet despite the prophecies that the war in Iran would plunge the U.S. into a recession, the evidence is that America’s economic animal spirits are alive and well.”

Why? The facts were higher up in the overview:

“The Commerce Department raised its GDP growth estimate for the first quarter to 2.5% from 2.1%, as well as for the second to 2.2% from 1.5%. These large revisions reflect newly available data as well as updates to annual benchmarks that include refinements in methodology since 2021.

The upward revisions to real GDP growth stem partly from reduced inflation estimates. But the bigger story is that business investment and consumer spending have been stronger than economists thought. Business investment was revised up half a percentage point to 9% thanks to higher spending on intellectual property and structures tied to AI. Commerce says data centers drove the increase, while information processing equipment contributed to stronger consumer spending.”

The link to the editorial is in the replies, but add to the Journal’s optimism the increasingly likely prospect of regime collapse in Iran. Economists don’t often factor in the lifting of a long-standing burden on the world’s economy, but the Islamic Republic’s fanaticism has been a tax on the world’s economy and especially on the Middle East since 1979. When that tax is lifted, an era of extraordinary growth follows.