Sitting around at a kids’ birthday party last night talking with some other parents about the economy, and one of the guys who does some day trading was talking about how there seems to be this desperation to see minor upticks the day after a major sell-off as a “return to normalcy” when in fact it isn’t.

It resonated because Drudge does this continually. Today, he links to a story about how the market has rebounded slightly after yesterday’s historic plunge, and his headline:

“Calm returns.”

I check in on Drudge several times a day, and he does this all the time. Things are getting back to normal! Move along, nothing to see here!

Garbage.

Check out the following graphic on what happened after the 1929 crash. Note how there were numerous partial recoveries - even as the market continued to sink:

Now, maybe the crashing we’ve seen doesn’t follow this same trajectory; but as you look at this graphic, consider how many times Drudge, had he been around, would have headlined his site with “Calm prevails” or “Back to normal.”

Have no doubt about the historic nature of what we’re seeing right now. And we may have quite some time to go yet - talking to local economists for last week’s story on how this affects us, virtually everyone said they think housing prices are going to continue falling for several months, at least. The banks’ situation gets worse, maybe a lot worse, before it gets better.

“Normalcy,” in other words, is a long way off. Regardless of what Drudge tries to manipulate you into thinking.