Despite much anecdotal evidence that many Americans are disappointed by the behaviour of the US economy, President Barack Obama has been returned to the White House with a convincing majority. Does this show that the campaign of former Democrat President Bill Clinton was wrong to focus on “the economy, stupid”? Not necessarily. I have a table of the behaviour of the main industrial economies since their pre-recession peak of 2007-08. Taking both that recession and the recovery from it, Canada heads the list with a net gain of real gross domestic product of 4.1 per cent. The US comes next with 2.2 per cent, followed by Germany with 1.7 per cent. France is still 0.8 per cent behind its earlier peak and Japan is 1.9 per cent short. The UK is almost bottom of the class with a net fall of 3.1 per cent, a drop exceeded only by Italy among the G7 countries.

These numbers contain some estimation but they are historical records, not forecasts. The discrepancies are too large to be explained by demography. The US must be doing something right.

Because of Congressional Republican opposition, the economic stimulus has not been as large as Mr Obama would have liked. Even so, it is a pity he has not had a Treasury secretary who would have proclaimed the relative superiority of US policy from the rooftops, as Larry Summers, an earlier Democrat incumbent of this post, would have.