Very Serious People

by digby

Here’s an acid flashback to start the week:

Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line

By Donald Luskin
Sunday, September 14, 2008

“It was the worst of times, and it was the worst of times.”

I imagine that’s what Charles Dickens would conclude about the current condition of the U.S. economy, based on the relentless drumbeat of pessimism in the media and on the campaign trail. In the past two months, this newspaper alone has written no fewer than nine times, in news stories, columns and op-eds, that key elements of the economy are the worst they’ve been “since the Great Depression.” That diagnosis has been applied twice to the housing “slump” and once to the housing “crisis,” to the “severe” decline in home prices, to the “spike” in mortgage foreclosures, to the “change” in the mortgage market and the “turmoil” in debt markets, and to the “crisis” or “meltdown” in financial markets.

It’s a virus — and it’s spreading. Do a Google News search for “since the Great Depression,” and you come up with more than 4,500 examples of the phrase’s use in just the past month.

But that doesn’t make any of it true. Things today just aren’t that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression — or exaggerated Depression comparisons.

I assume Luskin is still employed and is still consulted on economic matters by all the serious important people. Certainly, he is more respected than those Cassandras and doomsayers who were “prematurely pessimistic.” There is no crime in being completely wrong, but woe to anyone who is right earlier than everyone else. He or she will never be forgiven for such rude prescience.

h/t top db