Multiple choice economy

This is a multiple choice quiz about our economy and the state of our nation. It includes lots of contradictory information and torturous logic. If that sounds like an impossible test, don’t worry, all the correct answers will be printed below.
To answer the question about the state of our current economy, choose your answer from any of the following choices:
A) The worst. This is the worst beginning of a new year ever for Wall Street and the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Index, S&P 500 and NASDAQ values have plunged to eight-month low levels. Signs of early panic, sell-offs and fears of a bubble burst have been reported. The GOP presidential candidates are convinced that Obama has purposely ruined America forever.
B) The best. Total housing sales in Sonoma County set a record last year at $3.4 billion for 5,500 sold homes. The median price for a home in Healdsburg hit $805,823 and the county average was $530,000. All these values were the highest in 10 years, since before the Great Recession. Local market experts predict another 9.3 percent rise in values for this year in Sonoma County. On. Jan. 27, economist Dr. Jerry Nickelsberg will address the annual  State of the County breakfast. He is expected to repeat his message from last year that our North Coast economy is one of the best in the nation, thanks to our wine, hospitality, high tech, revitalized housing construction and health care industries.
C) The strongest. In his State of the Union speech last week, President Obama said “The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world. Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” He admitted the recovery from the Great Recession has been slow, but he said unemployment is now very low, that millions of new jobs have been created and America’s economy is far better than all other parts of the world including Europe, China and Russia.
D) The weakest. By unanimous decree, the GOP presidential candidates declare America’s economy is doomed unless one of them is elected our next president. “Our military is a disaster. Our health care is a horror show. We have no borders. Our country is being run by incompetent people. And yes, I am angry,” said Donald Trump.
Jeb Bush only slightly differs. “The simple fact is that the world has been torn asunder,” he said, blaming both Obama and Hillary Clinton. Marco Rubio offered, “if we don’t get this election right, there may be no turning back for America.”
Chris Christie called Obama’s presidency  “A dictatorship,” and called the president “A petulant child.” Christie said “The world is on fire.”
E) Unequal. Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate, thinks our economy is doing great — but only for the top one percent of the richest people in the country. “There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent,” says the socialist-leaning senator from Vermont. President Obama might agree with him. “Food stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did,” he said in his State of the Union address.
Final Hint: The correct answer is neither “all” nor “none” of the above. All the correct answers are based on each person’s current income, mortgage balance, retirement package and job security. For anyone who lost 30 percent of his 401K or property value in the Great Recession, or maybe defaulted on a mortgage, it’s easy to feel as angry as Trump or Sanders.
But the correct answer is that it’s our own family’s economy that matters the most, not the up-and-down stock market or the one being skewed and spewed by politicians.
In other words, what’s in your wallet?
— Rollie Atkinson