Mister, We're Getting A Man Like Herbert Hoover Again

Just as Virginia Postrel spotted several journalists hot for “Depression Porn“, Ezra Levant reminds us that it’s “Not quite the 1930s“:

So we’re in for another Great Depression, are we? Don’t believe it.

Now that the epic U. S. presidential race is over, a caffeinated press corps is in withdrawal, so hyperventilating about a new Depression is their new fix. Just to pick one newspaper at random, Toronto’s Globe and Mail used the phrase “Great Depression” over 300 times in December alone — or about a dozen times each edition. And that’s restrained compared to U. S. cable news shows.

Read the whole thing–as the aforementioned Postrel puts it, along with a link to historic annual unemployment rates, “Oh My God, It’s 1993 Again!”:

The recession is bad and probably will get worse, but historical context doesn’t scream Great Depression. Journalists, who are like steelworkers in the 1980s, can be forgiven for thinking the economy is collapsing–we’re all afraid of losing our jobs–but the rest of you should know better.

Finally, some thoughts on the media and the economy from the Blogfather, including a quote from one blogger who writes, “Compare the last 6 years (or so) of unremitting (and largely unwarranted- until recently) doom-and-gloom economic coverage, against the press’ bend-over-backward efforts to avoid riling the American public after 9/11.”

Glenn adds that journalists “know how to be exquisitely sensitive, when they’re protecting something they care about”, but it’s a remarkably situational sensitivity.

Update: Why are journalists so hot for Depression Porn (and consequently led the cheers for Hoover ’08)? Because of charts like this.