The Fraser Institute  has published a much-needed assessment of the Great Recession, concluding that the downturn wasn’t any worse in terms of unemployment and other miseries than Canada’s previous economic slowdowns in the 1980s and 1990s. The Vancouver-based think tank points out that the public near-panic was fueled heavily by the media. In Toronto’s Globe & Mail, to cite a leading example, the term ‘Great Recession’ appeared 82 times within 18 months.

In the United States, at least in some regions, the recession has been deeper and longer. It’s almost like Canadians reacted more to American realities than to our own. Here again we see the power of media – sometimes right, sometimes wrong, always present.

Across North America, centre-left politicians jumped on the Great Recession as an opportunity to go on a public spending binge that leaves us more vulnerable to a real depression. Even centre-right leaders like Prime Minister Stephen Harper were cowed by the media frenzy into blowing billions.

At least there was a recession. The mother of all hype-inflated bubbles – human-induced global warning – has much less of a case in actual facts. Primitive mankind had superstitions, we moderns have the media.

The Great Recession article is available free of charge here in the Fraser Forum.