Blogging on Meds

McCain’s top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, had this to say about the economy in an interview with the Washington Times (emphasis mine):

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.” “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Now, Gramm is technically correct that the economy isn’t in a recession. The popular definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth (the official arbiter of a recession is a recession-dating group at the National Bureau of Economic Research), and we haven’t had that yet, though growth in both the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter this year was weak. Still, to suggest that Americans are whining about record-high gasoline prices, surging fuel costs, and a big hit to their wealth via declining home prices is outright callous, not to mention an idiotic political move. Needless to say, Obama jumped all over Gramm’s comments.

“I want all of you to know that America already has one Dr. Phil. We don’t need another one when it comes to the economy – we need somebody to actually solve the economy.”

The McCain camp realized how bad Gramm’s comments were, so McCain immediately went out and distanced himself from his top economic adviser, and he also emailed reporters a video of him bashing his point man on economics:

So, Mcain has admitted that he doesn’t know anything about economics, and now he thinks that his top economic adviser is wrong on the economy. This was supposed to be the week where McCain focused every day on the economy, and so far it’s been a disaster. Is there anyone in his camp who knows anything about economics?

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