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El-Erian Says The U.S. Alone Has Exited The ‘New Normal’

U.S. finding ‘higher growth equilibrium’ of 2.5% to 3%.

El-Erian Says The U.S. Alone Has Exited The ‘New Normal’
A statue of Albert Gallatin, former U.S. Treasury secretary, stands outside the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C., U.S. (Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)  

(Bloomberg) -- Americans can wave goodbye to the “new normal,” according to the man who popularized the term.

Allianz SE chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian (who is also a Bloomberg Opinion columnist) says the world’s largest economy has finally broken out from its post-crisis malaise.

“The U.S. on a standalone basis has exited this new normal, is now finding a higher growth equilibrium, 2.5 to 3,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television Monday.

El-Erian Says The U.S. Alone Has Exited The ‘New Normal’

The U.S. gross domestic product rose by 4.1 percent quarter-on-quarter from April through June at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, its fastest pace of growth since 2014.

In 2009, El-Erian and his colleagues at Pacific Investment Management Co. coined the term “new normal” to describe their meager outlook for global activity: slower growth and more regulation -- not a V-shaped recovery to 3 percent expansions. This view was largely panned by Wall Street economists at the time. However, it evolved into conventional wisdom as growth failed to meaningfully accelerate in the post-crisis era with lackluster productivity gains and an aging workforce.

Now, the stage is set for labor force participation to rise while the unemployment rate stays low, according to El-Erian. This combination means the Federal Reserve can “safely raise rates,” without fearing it will choke off activity.

“We may well have a situation where things come together,” he said. “The disruption to that comes from the outside, not within the U.S.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Luke Kawa in New York at lkawa@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Ferro in London at jferro10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Randall Jensen, Andrew Dunn

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