While Neil Cavuto reminded fact-challenged, Clinton operative Lanny Davis that 95% of homeowners are indeed paying their mortgages on time, Davis continued his recitation that America is spiraling downward.

Despite all the doom and gloom, America is not in a recession, in fact, according to our rule of economics, “if the economy contracts for six straight months it is considered to be in a recession. That, however, didn't happen in the last recession in 2001”, and it isn’t happening now.

Soaring gas prices, higher food prices, and a sputtering job market aren’t helping things but since the Democrat presidential candidates, in an effort to differentiate themselves from President Bush, chose the economy as a topic to beat on, well, if you repeat something often enough, people will believe it.

Just last fall, the stock market was soaring, jobs were plentiful, the sub-prime mortgage mess was just starting to rear its ugly head, but the economy was rolling along full steam. That is, until presidential candidates who have to appear at photo-op visits to people’s places of employment so they can understand what “ordinary people” do, decided to call ours the worst economy since the Hoover Administration.

According to Fox News and Associated Press,

Many analysts were predicting gross domestic product (GDP) growth would come in at 0.5 percent during the January — March 2008 period. Earlier this year, some economists thought the economy actually would lurch into reverse during the opening quarter.

The latest numbers reported Wednesday by the Commerce Department also did not meet what economists consider the classic definition of a recession, a retraction of the economy. This means that although the economy is stuck in a rut, it is still managing to grow, even if the growth is modest.

So why do so many Americans believe we are in recession? Ignorance of what the true definition of a recession is. The fact that presidential candidates are repeating this inaccuracy doesn’t help either.  Continued...