if you don't mind I paid the $7 and put it in the Yahoo Feed along with a few of my republican friends..lol

What were some of the other things The Economist had to say regarding their "admittedly unscientific" poll?

Quoting directly:

    "The Economist polled two groups: research associates of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the country’s leading organisation of academic economists; and the outlook panel of the National Association for Business Economics. The academics gave Mr Obama much higher marks than Mr Romney, which may in part reflect partisan preference: fully 45% of them identified themselves as Democrats, and just 7% as Republicans."

So I guess by calling them "yours", you meant that literally, in your pocket.

Another interesting quote:

    "Interestingly, opinions of Mr Obama became less favourable as questions turned from the general to the specific. On tax reform, entitlements (Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare) and the deficit, respondents gave the two men roughly equal grades. The independents, by a clear margin, preferred Mr Romney’s approach to all these issues. So although the public on balance dislikes the proposal of Mr Romney and Paul Ryan, his running-mate, to convert Medicare to vouchers, our economists were much better disposed to it, especially in comparison with Mr Obama, who has offered no overall solution to the programme’s insolvency other than to to cut fees to providers and experiment with new ways to deliver care. “Medicare plan? Keep everything as is and wait for Santa Claus?” snorted one independent."

Regarding the polling of the non-academics forecasters:

    "By contrast, the forecasters, a much less partisan crowd, consistently assigned Mr Romney higher scores. Democrats and Republicans were equally represented in this group, at 22% each."

http://www.economist.com/node/21564175

Face it, Republicans suck when it comes to handling the economy. Look at their list of accomplishments:

Warren G. Harding put in place the biggest tax cuts on the rich in US history. This formed the economic bubble of the 20's that lead to the Great Depression.

Hoover spent 4 years with a Great Depression on his lap, and did little to solve the problem. In fact, he made things worst. He even had the army fire upon WW1 vets.

Eisenhower served during a period of unbelievable economic growth. But somehow he managed to send the economy into a recession.

Nixon racked up enough war debt, and then he let our currency float by abandoning Bretton Woods, which created the stagflation of the late 70's.

Reagan gutted unions, and GM became a flop on his watch. His policies led to the first time since the Depression that we saw double digit unemployment rates. It took Reagan 7 years to get unemployment down to wear Carter had it. And it did it by creating an economic bubble that crashed the stock market in '87.

Bush 1 largely inheriented Reagan's mess, but still failed to produce the a surging economy. Rather, he seemed to fumble along as unemployment kept going up.

Bush 2 resided over endless corporate accounting scandals, and a housing bubble that crashed the entire economy.

Now let's look at how Democrats have handled the economy.

FDR created more jobs than any other US president in US history. He got us out of the Depression, won WW2 all at the same time. When it was all over the USA was the world's strongest superpower and the strongest economy the world had ever seen.

Truman managed to continue FDR's legacy, despite being ham-strung by a GOP Congress. Truman tried to solve our health care crisis, but was blocked by those same Republicans. Imagine where we'd be now if they hadn't done that?

Kennedy's tax reforms increased the effective taxes the rich paid, and as a result unemployment dropped even further, and GDP growth rates reached it's highest point of the 20th century, growth rates that has not been repeated since.

Johnson's Great Society programs cut poverty in half. At the time, it was estimated that poverty would be eliminated in the USA by the turn of the century. I guess they didn't see Reagan coming.

Carter took important steps towards solving the oil embargo crisis, and started our nation's necessary move towards solar power. Imagine where we'd be today had Reagan not killed it. Carter also took the necessary steps to put the death blow to the Soviet Union by tricking the Soviets into invading Afghanistan, creating their own Vietnam. This could have given us an incredible peace dividend, had Bush 1 not invaded Iraq on false pretenses.

Bill Clinton gave us the first robust growth the nation had seen in 25 years, and managed to bring unemployment down to a rate of full employment.

Obama had given us 30 straight months of job growth, necessary Wall Street reforms, and has done more to fix our trade deficit than any other President in the last 30 years.

The record is more than clear. If you run the country like a business, then the only ones who benefit are business, at the expense of everyone else. If you run the country like a nation, then everyone benefits.