WE'RE NOT GOING TO PARTY LIKE IT'S 1934, SAYS REASON. Here's a sample:

"The last time we faced a hangover like this one, the president didn’t just talk, he acted," writes Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter. "In 1934 Franklin D. Roosevelt created something called the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate Wall Street." Alter went on to transcribe DNC’s talking points, dutifully copied by The Wall Street Journal’s house liberal, Al Hunt, and NBC’s Tim Russert, among others, noting that current SEC Commissioner Harvey Pitt was unfit for the job because he "came in talking about a ‘kinder, gentler SEC.’"

That Alter would compare 2002 to 1934 indicates that he’s about as grounded in reality as a WorldCom financial statement. The stock market is not the economy. And the economy of 2002 is not the economy of 1934.

In 1934, one in five Americans were unemployed -- and one in three for those who didn’t work on farms. The real economy had contracted by 37 percent from 1929 to 1934. Although it’s still disputed, many believe that it wasn’t the stock market crash of 1929 that caused the Depression, but the government’s response to it. A restrictive monetary policy caused banks to fail and businesses, starved for money, tanked in massive numbers.

Today, unemployment stands at 5.9 percent. There’s talk of a double-dip recession, but even the first dip is now being disputed. We’ve only actually experienced one quarter of negative economic growth. The stock market hasn’t crashed, as it did in 1929 or even 1987, when it collapsed 22 percent in a single day.

I'll never forget the last presidential election, watching Alter's tirade on NBC at about 1:30 in the morning Pacific Time when Alter demanded that Gore be handed the election, despite the outcome in Florida. (When Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert lecture you on the Constitution, as they did to Alter afterwards on the air, you know you're really out there.

The Reason article is a very good look at what's right and wrong with the economy today, and as usual, remarkably free of typical journalistic spin.