I'm Helen Joyce.

I'm Helen Joyce.

Welcome to the Economist's money talks.

It's said now that our economy is the strongest it's ever been in the history of our country and

you just have to take a look at the numbers. I'd like to ask Kevin Hasert. On today's

special program we hear from Dr Kevin Hasat, the chair of the Council of Economic

Advisors. That's one of the top officials in the Trump administration.

Inside of our country, we are just setting records and I'm going to keep it that way. We're having a lot of fun.

I'm here with our economics editor Henry Kerr who spoke to Dr. Hasett.

Henry, what is this job exactly?

The chair of the Council of Economic Advisors is sort of like the

President's internal think tanker on economic matters. So typically there's someone

who's worked previously as an academic economist or at a think tank and they provide more rigorous

backing for the president's economic policies than you would typically find they

try to justify themselves to economic policy wonks like me and that's particularly interesting in the

Trump administration of course where there aren't many of those folks around who will try to

give you a rigorous grounding of what the administration's trying to do. And so Henry you met up with Dr. Hasett?

Yes, I met Dr. Hasett in a hotel, a stones throw from the houses of parliament in London.

I asked him what he made of the recent acceleration in economic growth in America.

They've had two strong quarters of economic growth, 3.5% and 4.2%, and I asked him whether this was just a short-term sugar high spurred by President Trump's tax cuts

or whether it was something more sustainable.

I think a sugar high would be maybe a consumption burst that was driven by something like the government mailing

...