When No News Is Bad News

Donald Lambro catches the legacy media pooh-poohing the nation’s economic health and notes:

Adjectives such as “mediocre” or “lackluster” or “weak” or “sluggish” are being used in the business reporting columns to describe an economy that in fact is growing at about 4 percent, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s third quarter revision of the Gross Domestic Product. Since when is 4 percent GDP growth “mediocre” or “lackluster?” Europe is barely achieving 1-2 percent. They would be dancing in the streets in Japan if they had such growth.

Up since the election are the stock market, consumer confidence, retail sales and industrial activity. What is down is unemployment. Perhaps the best indication of how Americans measure the economy and their own financial situation, President Bush’s job approval score is at 53 percent.

As Lambro writes, “Back to you, Dan”.

Update: Speaking of a sluggish Europe, Power Line observes that in Holland:

The Dutch middle classes are leaving the country in droves for the first time in living memory.

The new wave of educated migrants are quietly voting with their feet against a multicultural experiment long touted as a model for the world, but increasingly a warning of how good intentions can go wrong.

And as Glenn Reynolds noted in 2002, “If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest measured by household gross income before taxes”.

Another Update: Victor Davis Hanson writes that for Europe, “gut-check time is coming”.