Things aren't that bad.

Consider this...

A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negetive GDP growth. Have we had that? No. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis GDP has increased the last three quarters.

Q4 2007 GDP was up 0.4%
Q1 2008 GDP was up 0.9%
Q2 2008 GDP was up 2.8%

We have no banking crisis. We have had a handful of banks run into problems. And they were bought by larger healthy banks. Countrywide and Merrill Lynch have been gobbled up by BofA. Why? Because BofA plans on making money.

Lehman brothers is being carved up between several other firms. Barclays is buying Lehman's research division, Bain Capital is buying a hunk,Nomura hired about 2,500 of Lehman's British employees and bought Lehman's Asian operations. And of course, as we have all heard, Wachovia is buying $494 billion of Lehman's bad debt. Why? Because Nomura, and Wachovia, and Bain, and Barclay's are getting ready to reap a fortune in the investment banking business.

Citi just agreed to buy Wachovia's troubled retail operations. Why? Because Wachovia sucks at retail banking and Citi knows how to do it and make money. Citi plans growing, and Wachovia is well capitalized to compete in the investment banking sector.

Warren Buffet just took a $5 billion stake in Golman Sachs. Wells Fargo is strong. Citi is strong. BofA is strong. The land that backs up all of that "bad" debt isn't going anywhere. The U.S. produces more food than we can possibly eat. No one is going to starve. The U.S. Gov't holds 29,813 tons of gold bars. There are more than 700,000,000 barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Unemployment, which was over 10% in the 1980s is now barely over 6%. In inflation adjusted dollars we spend about the same for gasoline as we did in the 1950s.

I am astounded that anyone thinks these are hard economic times. We are rich rich rich. But we talk like the world is afalling apart. In the last 10 days I've heard some of my coutrymen express fear about overpopulation, another great depression, famine, global warming, run-away inflation, deflation, rising unemployment, high gas prices, and the price of cable televsion. I swear, people are nuts. Its like they don't have anything to wory about so they have to make stuf up.

And while I'm at it, I want to thank those 40% of House democrats and 66% of House republicans who voted against the Baking Bailout Bill. I am proud of you. It is probably the best thing Congress has done all year. Let bad banks fail so the healthy banks can eat them and make something useful out of them. Don't pick winners and losers. That's not your job. THank you for letting the market work.