DAVID WOO: The US Is In Its Strongest Economic Position In 20 Years

Bank of AmericaBank of America Merrill Lynch's David Woo made headlines last week by lending credibility to Bitcoin. But now the foreign exchange specialist is out with an even more bullish call on the U.S. economy at large.

"The U.S. is in the strongest economic position in 20 years," Woo said at BAML's global research press conference today.

"The U.S. will be the biggest drive of global markets in 2014, as it moves further ahead of other economies in the global business cycle," he said.

Woo's team created a "new country ranking of relative economic strengths" that weighs a country's unemployment rate, current account, and fiscal balance. Woo calls the new ranking system REBALANCE.

What he found is that, under REBALANCE, the U.S. is the strongest economy in the world. Check out the current rankings:

BAML

The U.S. is in its strongest economic position since 2000. The U.S. was ranked dead last in the ranking just three years ago, but has since moved to first (Chart 2).

Woo says this is all the more impressive because it isn't easy to improve REBALANCE's three underlying metrics all at once. This phenomenon is marked by the gray bars in Chart 3.

BAML

"The strength of the U.S. economy will drive the dollar, U.S. interest rates and U.S. interest rates volatility upward, setting the general direction for the rest of the global rates and currencies markets," Woo said.