Talk politics.

Some are now speaking of a Biden boom. Although the first quarter of the year has passed, the data keeps mounting in favour of a real growth forecast. Even if based on partial data (as of yet), the expected growth of the US economy is hovering around 7-8%. More importantly, the outstanding first quarter will likely not be alone. A recent WSJ research registered a median growth forecast of 6.4% for 2021.

If this really is the case, that'd be the fastest recovery since 1984. That boom came after a deep recession, and brought the famed Reagan "Dawn of a new America", and consequently, his landslide victory. Clinton's boom was similar, but Biden's potential boom won't be entirely due to the president's policies. But they'll surely be of help.

Much of the credit goes to vaccination - including accelerated vaccination under Biden. Another factor is the remarkable resilience of the US private sector. Hundreds of millions of people and tens of millions of businesses got stuck in their own cells when Covid-19 hit, but then they crawled back out, finding new ways of doing business and trading.

The private economy has also received a huge boost from the government. Contrary to Reagan's famous words, the government actually turned out to be a major part of the solution. The huge fiscal push came from the 2.2 trillion dollar stimulus bill passed with a large majority by Congress in March 2020. Although there could be many reasons for criticism for that law, it did give so much money into American hands that the real personal purchase power has increased by 3% for 2020, despite the GDP shrinking by 2.4%. That's remarkable.

As this stimulus was expended, and after a lot of partisan bargaining, both Dems and Reps agreed on a new fiscal package in Trump's last days, this time for 900 billion dollars. Then Biden came in, and the GOP retreated. His first big legislative victory was passing the pandemic package worth 1.9 trillion dollars, passed this March without any GOP support. The plan has been a huge stimulus for the economy so far.

Thus, the total combined amount of fiscal support is about 5 trillion dollars as of today, or roughly 23% of the GDP. This huge fiscal effort will keep millions of households afloat, and save many businesses from failure, and prevent this horrible pandemic from causing yet another big depression.

Thanks to the huge influx of federal money, US households now have enormous reserves at their disposal. Before the pandemic, the US consumers would usually save up to 7.5% of their income. In 2020, this share surged to 16.3%, a rate that's more typical of Singapore than the US. The margin equals a 1.4 trillion dollar surplus worth of savings.

Let's not omit monetary policy either. The Fed has shot all its bullets during the Covid recession, the most obvious one being the slashing of interest rates almost to zero levels. What's remarkable is that this tactic worked. After some serious but short turbulence, Americans started buying cars and houses again - despite the pandemic. The expenses for these two categories actually increased by 6.3% and 14.3% respectively (for 2020). Seems like we should never underestimate the US consumer after all.

Sure, this may sound a bit much in terms of pinky-rosy pictures, etc. A recession has been prevented, a new boom is coming up? What!? Surely there must be something that would go wrong here, right? Well, yes. There's still reason for concern. Actually four reasons.

One, the battle between the vaccines and the new virus variants could still be lost. But epidemiologists seem to believe the vaccines will likely prevail. The big question seems to be, how much the virus would be "aided" by anti-vaxxer sentiment and irresponsible behavior.

Two, the enormous budget deficits mean mounting public debt. Some experts are wondering how much public debt could swell before global investors start demanding higher interest rates on US bonds. That's a logical concern. So far, so good. But for how long?

Three, some economists are concerned that fiscal stimulus combined with extremely loosened monetary policy would bring inflation - and this would cause the Fed to tighten things up. Consider this possible, albeit not very likely at this point.

And finally, some conservative-leaning economists, and many GOP congresspeople, have bet on their regular adage: increasing taxes would erase growth, or worse. Such predictions have demonstrably been proven wrong in the past, so maybe we should be taking them with a big grain of salt. But still.

All in all, the list of concerns doesn't seem too big right now. Perhaps Americans should really savor the moment and enjoy Joe's boom - at least for the time being.