Last week?s announcement that Bermuda?s gross domestic product expanded by 9.1 percent in 2005, giving Bermuda residents the highest per capita GDP in the world may well sound like good news.

And to some degree it is. It is inarguable that economic growth is better than no growth or recession. It can also be argued that a rising tide lifts all boats, so everyone should benefit in some way from a growing economy.

But is also inarguable that some people benefit more than others, and the recently released raft of economic indicators suggest that there can be too much of a good thing.

Added proof of this was given in a Reuters story in yesterday?s Business section, which said the British Statistical Office is going to provide a personal inflation calculator, which may help to explain why some people feel inflation is rising more quickly than the overall increase in the consumer price index.

Such a calculator would be useful here too. For example an elderly person who spends the bulk of their income on rent and health care may have seen prices rise much more quickly in November ? when rents rose eight percent year over year and health care costs jumped by 20 percent ? than a teenager, who may not pay rent and is in good health.

A similar comparison can be taken to overall growth. With strong growth in the economy in areas like construction and international business these are good times indeed for insurance executives and contractors. But they may not be so good for people in less buoyant areas of the economy, who face rising prices and little real improvement in their wages.

As Sen. E.T. (Bob) Richards and Bermuda College economist Craig Simmons have pointed out, Bermuda?s economy may well be dangerously overheated, and a growth rate of 9.1 percent in a year seems to emphasise that. That?s because it tends to put more money into the economy, thus increasing demand and the price people are willing to pay for goods.

Indeed, the GDP figures released last week support that, noting that economy-wide inflation rose by 4.5 percent in 2005.

Those kinds of price increases may well be unsustainable, and in the long term hurt the Island?s competitiveness.

Certainly, their effects can be seen in housing, and the problem there is that housing construction may never catch up with demand, especially for middle and lower income residents, as opposed to the McMansions sprouting up all over the place.

Bermuda lacks the monetary tools that typically would be used to tame inflation and to control growth, notably the ability of a central bank to set key interest rates. In the US, the Federal Reserve has gradually pushed interest rates up to try to slow inflation and to tame a housing bubble.

In Bermuda, the banks must take the lead on interest rate control, but instead they have been reluctant to raise rates, and yesterday the Bank of Bermuda/HSBC began offering mortgages that require no money down and could be interest only for up to ten years, a move other lenders may well decide to mimic.

While this may give the impression of making it easier to buy a home, it could also drive house prices up further, because it will mean that even more people, armed with easy money, are chasing the same limited number of properties for sale. In the long run, again, that could be dangerous, as is the possibility of someone paying interest on a property for years and ending up without owning a square foot of it.

Strong growth is to be welcomed ? and Finance Minister Paula Cox deserves some credit for ensuring the economy continues to thrive ? but untrammelled growth is not necessarily desirable in an economy with a shrinking local workforce and some of the highest costs (as well as incomes) in the world.