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White House Says Economy Stinks -- No, Wait, It's Great!

By Matthew Vadum on 3.16.09 @ 2:20AM

Available evidence shows the U.S. economy is in shambles -there's a 20% chance we'll have a depression- yet the Obama administration's stated views on the condition of the economy change from day to day depending on the audience.

A week ago White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Peter Orszag told reporters "fundamentally, the economy is weak."

But then there was a miraculous turnaround, at least rhetorically, as President Obama osculated the posterior of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao whose bond holding government is justifiably nervous about the solvency of the U.S. government.

In the absence of actual evidence and contrary to every statement he made about the economy while he rammed his so-called stimulus bill through Congress last month, President Obama said Friday: "if we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy, all the outstanding companies, workers, all the innovation, and dynamism in this country, then we're going to get through this. And I'm very confident about that."

White House chief economic adviser Christina Romer echoed her boss's words Sunday, saying that fundamentals of the economy are "sound."

"The fundamentals are sound in the sense that the American workers are sound, we have a good capital stock, we have good technology," Romer said on "Meet the Press."

Maybe OMB's Peter Orszag didn't get the memo from David Axelrod.