Wealth & Money Quote by David Talbot

“Of course” does a lot of sneaky work here: it pretends consensus, smooths over uncertainty, and frames a messy recession as something any sane adult should already recognize. Talbot’s intent isn’t to diagnose the economy with precision; it’s to manage the reader’s nervous system. By calling the downturn a “down cycle,” he swaps the language of crisis for the language of seasons. Cycles end. They always have. That’s the comfort.

The other move is political, but carefully indirect. The throwaway comparison to “another Bush presidency” borrows the authority of precedent while sidestepping outright blame. It’s a wink to the audience: we’ve seen this movie before, and the casting matters. Even so, he avoids turning the quote into an indictment, keeping it journalist-friendly while still letting partisans connect the dots.

The subtext is a pitch for patience, with a hint of scolding toward panic: the economy is “locked in” (not broken), and the last time it took “a year and a half” (a finite sentence). The phrase “everyone came out of it” is deliberately blunt, almost folksy, flattening the unevenness of recovery. Not everyone comes out equally. Some don’t come out at all. But as rhetoric, that simplification is the point: it trades nuance for morale, offering a stabilizing narrative at the exact moment narratives become economic policy by other means.