[National Review] Conditions now are fundamentally different from 2008.George Will’s recent syndicated column, "America Is Overdue for Another Economic Disaster," puts me in the painful position of having to decide if I want to ignore a topic that should not be ignored, or if I want to take on one of the great op-ed writers of all time. I am not sure I have disagreed with even three columns George has written over the decades I’ve been reading him, and I hold him in extraordinarily high regard. But his stab at economic fearmongering warrants a response.
The article serves as a compilation of the most commonly uttered refrains from market bears about the current stock market and economy: that this bull market is the longest ever, that a Lehman Brothers‐like collapse is around the corner, that this economic expansion is long in the tooth, and that deficits and debt stand to blow us to smithereens. As is usually the case, even with many writers who are but a fraction as smart and gifted as George Will, the argument comes by blending technically accurate factoids with deceiving or poorly nuanced conclusions.
And the melodrama of appeals to the memory of Lehman Brothers ("Those who see no Lehman-like episode on the horizon did not see the last one," writes Will) manages to whip readers into a perfect frenzy of fear and usually irrational behavior.
Let’s be clear. If the basic point of the piece were merely to point out the rather obvious fact that President Trump’s claims that this is "the greatest economy we have ever had" are patently absurd, there would be no beef. The president’s boasts do fail to pass the math test, since, as Will points out, we have had 101 quarters since 1947 as strong or stronger as the one we just finished. The fact that politicians exaggerate facts and figures to their benefit is where the word "spin" comes from, even if this president seems to be particularly fond of the practice. My concern with Will’s article is not that he wants to correct the administration’s claims about the strength of the economy.