Common Sense: Stumbling But Not Stopping

A lot of people make a lot of blanket generalities.

When the market sells off big-time, they say it's crashing. When scores of companies layoff thousands of workers, they say millions are losing jobs. And when they take a look at an economy bearing the brunt of all this, they say it's a recession.

In each and every case, they are wrong.

Now, I know what some of you are going to say. There goes that knucklehead Cavuto again, swearing off the severity the rest or us see every day.

Trust me, I won't do that. I know a lot of people are hurting. And many more are worrying. But we better get our terms right and save the exaggerations for when they're warranted.

Take this recession talk. We're not there yet — plain and simple. No doubt we are slowing down and the latest GDP figures confirm it — the economy is growing a meager one percent in the final three months of the year.

But let's be clear here: that's still growth. And as long as you have growth, any growth, you can't have a recession. And you can't say we do have a recession until you've got not one, but two, back-to-back negative quarters.

So we're not there yet.

Now, I know that old expression, "when your neighbor loses his job that's a recession. When you lose yours, that's a depression." So clearly depressing economic news has a corrosive effect. It bums people out.

All I'm asking of my fellow journalists is that they tell you the truth. That we're stumbling, but we're not stopping. There is a difference.

People believe what they see and hear. And if they hear nothing of the small and medium sized companies that are hiring, but only the big ones that are not they're convinced, and maybe rightly so, it's the end of the world.

I'm here to tell you, it's not the end of the world. Now it might be if we don't all get our taxes cut and maybe a few more of our interest rates cut, but I'm optimistic. We're not there yet.

Again, not yet.

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