There's been lots of trash talking our way into a recession

......something Dems/Lefties/"Progressives" are positively giddy about happening, as such a thing puts them in a position to take political advantage.

And, as discussed at length here and at Cassandra blogs like Ed Cone's, the drum beat of negativity is legend.

Here are some of the techniques by which said recession might be pulled off.

Noteworthy:

"U.S. consumers have taken $3-a-gallon gas and a drop in our home equity in stride. Yet the media seems hell-bent on convincing us multinational banks' subprime mortgage losses and a weak dollar will torpedo the economy in a way the stock market's collapse, mass layoffs and 9/11 scarcely did in 2001.

'There is a herd mentality with prevailing outlooks on economic conditions because few of us want to be caught unprepared,' says Mitchell Marks, an organizational psychology professor at San Francisco State University. 'If people get bombarded with a grim message, that herd grows bigger and stronger.'"

"Consider this: The combination of the Nasdaq's 80% drop, a two-thirds rise in our unemployment rolls and the trauma inflicted by a puissant Arab extremist together produced just one of the shallowest recessions in U.S. history. You gotta believe it'll take more than a passing credit squeeze to cause the world's greatest economy to falter again."