46% of Americans Being Duped on the State of the Economy

You can never overestimate the ignorance of the American public:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Nearly half of Americans think the U.S. economy is in a recession — close to 46 percent of those surveyed in a new CNN-Opinion Research Corporation Poll out Thursday morning say the country’s economy is in a recession while 51 percent of those questioned say no.

The poll finds a major difference of opinion between black and white Americans — 69 percent of black Americans questioned in the survey say the country’s in a recession while only 42 percent of white Americans feel the same way.

According to CNN’s Ali Velshi, the National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief and they have been rare in recent decades.”

Why do you think so many people think the economy is in recession? Because all they hear through their various news sources is the bad news. Housing prices and sales are down and there are problems in the home lending business, but that's only one small part of the total economic picture, but since that's just about all you hear in the mainstream media, people who don't bother to get the facts are easily misled.

Larry Kudlow calls the Bush economy the "greatest story never told", and these figures suggest that the misimpression that the economy is in trouble is a long way from being fixed.

And, you can expect to hear more bad news as the election progresses. Don't forget that in 1992 the Clinton team successfully sold the idea that the Bush I economy was the "worst economy in 50 years" even though it wasn't even remotely true. No one in the media challenged those statements and they stuck. The media has some competition now in the form of the new media which is willing to report the truth about the current economic growth, but I doubt the people that make up the 46% mentioned in the survey are accessing news sources other then the mainstream TV networks and their local newspapers.