Welcome. This is Anastasia Yuglova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

Be sure to log on to our website WWC.org for a full archive of our podcast as well as many other

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Cato Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds, in his latest column for the Washington Times,

attempts to discredit economic doomsayers warning of a coming crisis.

He attributes this to election year jitters and

partisan bickering. In today's podcast he makes the case for optimism and gives us a

roundup of the economic situation in the United States.

Are warnings about an impending recession, a case of partisan economics?

Most likely, because they are based on nothing we can see,

and they're disproportionate to what we can see in other words people

are saying there's trouble out there and then you ask them well what exactly is it and

they get very vague and nebulous.

Your arguments are up against those of some very well-established economists.

Among them are Nureal Rubini of New York University, Berkeley's Brad DeLong, and of course there's

Paul Krugman.

Well, Nurel brought up the other two in lieu of evidence.

In other words, he's saying, I'm predicting a severe recession

no later than the first quarter of next year.

And when you ask him why, he says, well, my friends, Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman,

think that's true too.

This is not logic and it's not evidence, it's name dropping and it gets us nowhere.

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