George F. Will ponders the downside potential of election-year handwringing over the economy.
Free trade, crucial to the growth of wealth globally since 1945, is in peril. People are playing with fire at a moment when there is economic gasoline spilled all over the place. But overstating problems can be its own form of fire: Recent polls, taken just before the announcements that third-quarter growth was a robust 3.9 percent and that 166,000 jobs were created in October, showed that up to 46 percent of Americans think the economy is in a recession.Posted by Alan at November 17, 2007 10:32 PM[...]
Presidential elections are always epidemics of economic illiteracy and hysteria, for two reasons: The party not holding the White House has an incentive to talk gloomy nonsense, and the media, for whom the phrase "good news" is an oxymoron ("We don't report the planes that land safely"), love crises. In 2004, Democrats spoke of "the worst economy since Hoover" and "Benedict Arnold CEOs." Republicans will, in time, have their wilderness season for spouting nonsensical pessimism.
That can, however, be self-fulfilling: Worried people curtail consumption, wary businesses defer investments. Everyone should remember the witticism that the stock market has predicted nine of the last three recessions.