Despite what the left-wing press has been telling us for months—and what they have been trying to make true simply by saying it—there has not been an economic contraction.
In fact, the opposite has been true: According to the latest numbers from the Commerce Department, the nation’s economy GREW at a slow but better-than-expected rate: a .6 percent increase in gross domestic product.
There are, of course, some significant problems: the housing and credit crunches, consumer spending down, a weak U.S. dollar, and ever-higher food and gas prices. But unemployment remains at historic lows: 5.1 percent. And businesses actually increased their investment in building up stocks of supplies, and U.S. exports are up.
This good economic news doesn’t mean there aren’t real problems effecting real people. This is why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are focusing on the bad news. For them, trolling for votes means pounding the message of “economic crises” and offering themselves as miracle workers who will solve them. (Of course, we know that when liberals are allowed anywhere near the economy, they wreak socialist disaster.)
We also know that presidents get the credit when the economy is good and the blame when it’s bad, and neither is really fair. President Bush has been lambasted for the state of the economy for months on end. Now we know that not only is the economy not in recession, it’s growing.
The American economy is a sprawling, complex organism with billions of moving parts. Does it have some significant problems? You bet. It always does. But those problems should not be highlighted to the exclusion of the bigger picture, which shows growth and innovation and above all, resilience.
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