Are they talking about the media or the rest of the economy?

NY Times:

You have heard that Fannie and Freddie, their gentle names notwithstanding, may cripple the financial system without a large infusion of taxpayer money. You have gleaned that jobs are disappearing, housing prices are plummeting, and paychecks are effectively shrinking as food and energy prices soar. You have noted the disturbing talk of crisis hovering over Wall Street.

Something has clearly gone wrong with the economy. But how bad are things, really? And how bad might they get before better days return? Even to many economists who recently thought the gloom was overblown, the situation looks grim. The economy is in the midst of a very rough patch. The worst is probably still ahead.

Job losses will probably accelerate through this year and into 2009, and the job market will probably stay weak even longer. Home prices will probably keep falling, shrinking household wealth and eroding spending power.

“The open question is whether we’re in for a bad couple of years, or a bad decade,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, now a professor at Harvard.

Officially, no. The economy is not in recession until a panel at a private institution called the National Bureau of Economic Research says so. Unofficially, many economists think a recession started six or seven months ago, even as the economy has continued to expand — albeit at a tepid pace.

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It is interesting how their timing of the "recession" coordinates with the Democrat political campaign isn't it. Certainly the old media has been a recession since about 2000. It has been losing money and shedding jobs for some time.

But so far Texas is not participating in the gloom. The City of Houston alone added over 54,000 jobs in the last 12 months. Statewide the Texas unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent in June.

While I live in the country, the appraisal on my acreage was up over 40 percent in the last year. Realtors attribute the rise to strong buying by Houston buyers looking for a place in the country.

The rest of the country could take a lesson from Texas and Houston and drop the idiotic anti energy policy of the Democrats in favor of a strong pro energy policy that invest in this countries resources rather than transferring wealth to other countries. I am sure that would pick up the economy as a whole.

The slowdown in the US is basically man made caused by Democrat energy policies and lending practices pushed by Democrats which resulted in loans to people that otherwise would not have qualified. They should not be rewarded for these bad policies by voters.