Recession and Fantasy Polls

Like Fantasy football using a computer game (instead of real games), AOL "News" is featuring one of those media manufactured, "sky is falling", sob stories about the economy--manufactured by a POLL that a "majority says" we are in a recession now, bolstered by the individual horror stories/quotes about how bad the economy is.

You can't get any STUPIDER than this story (or the poll on which it is based or the truly DESPICALBE Associated Press).

It is NOT a matter of opinion whether we have a recession or not.  There is a very specific definition (involving two straight quarters of DECLINING GDP, and we have not yet had ONE).  If the public feels bad about the economy (partly BECAUSE of STUPID "sky is falling" stories like this one), you will get this answer (although most answering have no idea what a "recession" is).

Plus, the story is a LIE.  A majority has not "said" we are in a recession.  Rather, a SMALL NUMBER of people have said that it their opinion in a suupsedly "scientific poll, and then that is PROJECTED to be the percetage of the much LARGER population that would say the same thing (just as polls had Obam and Romney winning California).  It is true that the way the media reporsts ALL polls is a LIE, but that does not make it any less true. 

You did not see stories on the economy, during the past five years, about how WELL the economy was doing--with a housing BOOM that was about the largest in the history of the country--creating a "bubble" that was bound to burst.  IN fact, you tended to see "sky is falling" stories when the economy was doing WELL. That is why people are willing to say it is doing worse now than it really is.

The housing "bubble" has burst (as the Clinton dot.com "bubble" burst before, albeit Clinton was no more responsible for it than President Bush was responsible for the housing "bubble").  So the economy is not doing well.  After the fact, it may trun out that we are in the beginning states of a recession.  It is actualy impossible to know at this point.  But the actual numbers show an economy holding up pretty well (given the bursting of the housing "bubble" and resulting credit/financial "crisis")

The sky is NOT falling.  There is no indication that this is anything more than another of those periodic, cyclical bumps in the economic road.