Despite Media Drumbeat, Economy Not So Bad

The media has been busily telling us how bad the economy is for the better part of the past seven years, never acknowledging the facts. In recent months, as their goal of electing a Democrat becomes ever more possible, the bad news on the economic front- whether justified or not- has increased correspondingly. Unfortunately, despite their best attempts, the economy is not cooperating as they would probably like.

A case in point is the housing industry. Home sales have been dropping for the past six months, and in advance of the latest release of data, reporters have been busy telling us how bad the housing industry is going to be. The numbers for February were released today, but unfortunately for the media, home sales actually increased in February! Not that the actual facts stopped the media from painting the news in the bleakest possible light. As the Associated Press report puts it,

Analysts cautioned against reading too much into the one-month rise in sales. Many economists are predicting that the steep slump in housing will not bottom-out until later this year after prices fall further and allow huge levels of unsold inventories to be reduced.

And of course, the AP then inserted the requisite warning about a recession they have been trying to provoke for seven years, and also managed to include a plug for the Democratic Party's preferred 'solutions'- more government! The article continued,

The steep slump in housing has raised concerns about a possible recession. Democrats are pushing the Bush administration to do more to stem a tidal wave of mortgage foreclosures to keep more unsold homes from being dumped on an already glutted market.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, on Monday called on President Bush to appoint an emergency working group on foreclosures to recommend new ways to confront the housing crisis.

"Over the past week, we've seen unprecedented action to maintain confidence in our credit markets and head off a crisis for Wall Street banks," Clinton said. "It's now time for equally aggressive action to help families avoid foreclosure and keep communities across this country from spiraling into recession."

This is wonderful news overall. If the media and the government would simply allow the market to work on its own, I am confident that the nation will manage to survive the fall in home prices, considering that the housing market has been overheated for some time- especially in the San Francisco area where I reside. But of course, if the media reported the facts on the ground without their usual bias, the chances of electing a Democrat in November would lessen- and that is definitely not the result that the media want to see. So they continue to push their recession theories. We can only hope that the recession theory bears as little relation to the truth the media's line on Iraq, global warming and most other stories that find their way to the mainstream media's front pages.