The economy is fine, really

says Brian Wesbury in today's WSJ. I went back and checked his other articles during various gloom and doom (usually media driven) periods in the last seven years. He's always been right--let's hope he is this time.

There's a lot of squabbling about the stimulus package, and I really doubt we can or should spend ourselves out of this problem. Each party wants to look like a savior and is afraid to look like the bad guy. The Democrats aren't the liberals they say they are (if they really cared about the weakest and smallest they'd be pro-life) and the Republicans aren't the conservatives they claim to be during election years. If they were, they wouldn't always be looking to the government to be the sugar daddy of big business, farmers and the military.

So why not take a look at what an economist says? He says the $100 billion loss on subprime loans represents 0.1% of the $100 trillion in combined assets of all U.S. households and U.S. non-farm non-financial corporations. Feel better? Exports on the other hand are 12% and growing at a 13.6% rate.

He says that the Great Depression deepened when Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt tried to fix the economy. President Hoover's tax hikes in 1932, and FDRs anti-capitalist government activity (remember all the alphabet soup of government programs you had to learn in American history class?) killed the American economy and drove unemployment to 20%. We know the Democrats plan to raise taxes--the worst thing they could do; then they'll add all sorts of new programs and regulations. This is not the way to go.

Read the article. You'll sleep better tonight--unless you plan to vote Democratic.