Was McCain wrong?

[Molly]

McCain, Monday morining: "the fundamentals of the economy are strong."

Was he wrong on that?

[Jamie (K)]

No. It's an election year, and in those years there's usually an attempt to make it appear that we're in a bad recession, even though we're not.

When Clinton was running against Daddy Bush, we were going through the mildest recession in US history, but the media made it look like a big catastrophe, and only AFTER the election did they tell us that the recession had ended months before the election.

In 2000, another election year, there was a big crash in the stock market because of the "correction" of the bubble in tech stock prices. The media told us we were going through an economic catastrophe, but employment was still high and the overall economy was in good shape, so once the stock prices corrected, the economy continued to grow.

Now we're seeing a similar situation with housing prices dropping and some banks failing because the government forced them to make bad loans. We've also had some inflation due to rising fuel prices, but those prices are declining again. However, the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of economic decline, but the US hasn't even had one, and employment is still at high rates only dreamed of during the economic nightmare years of Jimmy Carter.

The New York Times, CNN and some of the other news media basically take orders from the Democratic Party. You'll hear about this bad "recession" until the election is over, and once the new president takes over in late January, the whole issue will disappear.

[Molly]

So, according to you, the fundamentals of the economy are strong, right?

[Jamie (K)]

From what I read "beyond the headlines", they still are.

[Molly]