Pleasant Surprise

If you've been paying attention to financial news, you probably think the US economy is in trouble. I've certainly seen nothing but negative spin about it in newspapers, magazines and TV. But certain information is hard to keep down:

Let's see, GDP growth is strong, productivity is way up, unemployment is low, family incomes are rising, inflation is down, the stock market is up, and the federal deficit is down. Yet polls show that we are about to put more Democrats into both the House and the Senate. That should fix all of these economic problems, real quick.

Every bit of that post is well worth your time, thanks to Big Daddy for the link. Thomas Sowell once wrote that the problem with economic reporting is that so few people (and fewer journalists, I suspect) understand economics. As one who struggled mightily with economics in college, I am acutely aware how counterintuitive many economic concepts can be, and if you believe (as I do) that conventional wisdom is more often wrong than right, you can comfortably assume that most people don't have any idea what's going on with the economy. That's no reason to lie to us, but I don't think the press needs one any more.