The US economy did not grow at a 5% clip in Q3, nor will it grow anywhere close to 5% for the whole year 2014.
That's just the misleading "annualized" calculation method that the American BEA uses.
The internationally comparable methods are "quarter on quarter" growth and "year on year" growth, which means Q3, 2014 compared with Q2, 2014 and Q3, 2014 vs. Q3, 2013.
The actual numbers are:
Q3 2014 vs. Q3 2013: +2.7%
The BEA actually publishes this here (Table 8]:
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2014/txt/gdp3q14_3rd.txtQ1 2014 was +1.9% and Q2 was +2.6%
If the 4th quarter is also ca. +2.7%, then the overall US growth rate for 2014 should come in at ca. 2.4-2.6%, which is up from 2.2% in 2013 (see Table 7).
...
The BEA actually does not publish Q/Q growth rates like most other countries in the world, but it amounted to ca. 1.2-1.3% growth vs. Q2, 2014.
That is still much better than most Eurozone countries, but the UK had a higher growth rate for 2014 than the US (ca. 3%).
