McCain and the Recession

Just days after finally, tepidly admitting that yes, the US is indeed in a recession after all, comes this gem from top McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm: The recession is all in your head!

From The Washington Times:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

The campaign, sensing that this may not actually be the way to go during and election year where the economy is actually issue number one, is already frantically distancing McCain from these views. However, can one really distance one's self from one's own hand-selected economic guru on such matters? Time will tell. No doubt, the press will do what it can to help McCain. After all, it would be too much work to actually look at McCain's public record, where they would find that the candidate has his own history of noting that our economic woes are "psychological."

10 July 2008