NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - You know the drill.

Analysts, in their lithium-addled optimism, gently intoning the theme song from "Annie," come up with ridiculous future growth estimates for U.S. company profits one and two quarters out. Then, during earnings season, companies do their best to throw cold water on Wall Street's rosy expectations and investors come down with the shivers.

Justin Lahart, senior writer at CNN/Money, talks about rise in positive earnings estimates and U.S. companies that are sharing the optimism of analysts. Play video (Real or Windows Media)

But the funny thing is that during the current reporting season, that's not happening. On July 1 analysts polled by First Call said S&P 500 earnings would grow by 12.5 percent, year over year, in the third quarter and 21.1 percent in the fourth. Sounds like these guys are trapped in the 1990s, right?

But now, with about one third of the companies in the S&P having reported, something odd has happened: Analysts have bumped up their third-quarter earnings growth estimate to 13.5 percent and their fourth-quarter estimate to 21.3 percent.

What does this mean? That, for the first time in several years, U.S. companies are actually comfortable with Wall Street's optimistic assessment of what their future profits will look like. Corporate America believes in the recovery.

This isn't easy for the bears to stomach. Where exactly, they wonder, are these earnings supposed to come from? One way to think of profits is as pricing power -- the ability of companies to up the price of the goods they sell. The footprint of pricing power? Inflation -- something we've seen scant signs of lately.

In fact, Merrill Lynch's strategy group says one of the best profit growth indicators they've come across is the core reading on the Producer Price Index. That's the key barometer of inflation at the wholesale level, sans the volatile food and energy sectors. On a year-over-year basis, the core PPI has fallen for five of the last six months. Other inflation indicators aren't showing much of a rise, either. The Commodity Research Board's index of commodity prices, for example, which includes both food and energy, has fallen this year.

But this doesn't necessarily mean that the end is nigh. Companies' rosy outlooks might, for example, mean that they feel they've successfully reduced many of the excesses that have dogged them since the economy turned south. That would mean that they are operating a lot leaner and will be able to up their prices in the future.

Corporate America's optimism could also have beneficial blow-back effects for the economy. If companies really think that recovery has arrived, they may start loosening their purse strings again, upping spending and hiring back workers. Such belief in themselves could hasten a return to economic health.