Good news about America’s economy seems to keep rolling in. In the third quarter, gdp expanded by a barnstorming 4.9% in annualised terms. Heading into earnings season, the month or so each quarter when most firms report their latest results, a stream of upbeat economic figures led stockmarket analysts to hold their profit expectations for the quarter steady, rather than trim them like normal. Many called the end of America’s corporate-earnings recession. Such optimism now looks justified. Following a hat-trick of consecutive year-on-year quarterly profit declines, America Inc’s bottom line is growing again (see chart 1). According to FactSet, a data provider, of the half
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