"In normal economic times, there might not be anything wrong with this. But these aren't normal times."

I've come to really hate that phrase, as I see or hear it at least once per week. (That is, of course, an average as some weeks I don't hear it at all and through the election cycle peaks, it comes across news stories five or six hundred times per week.)

We are in perfectly normal times. The economic cycle we're in is normal, though perhaps somewhat exaggerated from '01 and from the mid-90s and the mid-80s and the 70s... well you probably get the picture. Terrorist threats and being involved in overseas wars is perfectly normal... Kosovo, Desert Storm, Vietnam, Korea... name me a decade in the last century or two that we've not been at war or threatened by terrorists, external or domestic. I'll wait...

So give me a reason why this should be considered a "non-normal" time.

Until then, I'm calling shenanigans on fear mongers.