"If we are in a recession, it will be one of the shallowest ever," he told me last week.
Looking for silver linings in this economy is not something that either the Obama campaign or the nightly news shows spend their time doing. But it is worth doing, if only to show that there is still a lot of life left in the ever-resilient U.S. economy that never ceases to surprise the doom-and-gloomers.
Let's take the housing picture, for example. In the past two weeks, the Commerce Department reported that new-home sales rose 3.8 percent and existing-home sales rose more than 6 percent in April -- the highest since October.
Lower prices and still historically low interest rates are luring buyers back into the market. Banks are increasingly eager to make loans to qualified borrowers, and we are seeing the beginning of an upturn in the housing industry that is going to lead this economy out of its lethargy.
We are also beginning to see a rise in durable-goods factory orders, and the latest 3 percent rise in U.S. exports in the first three months of this year gives every reason to believe that we are going to see a record in export sales in 2008.
But what are the candidates proposing to strengthen the economy for the long term? John McCain has by far the strongest economic agenda, while Obama's is embarrassingly weak by any objective measure.
McCain's growth prescriptions are all about lowering taxes and boosting investment capital for new-business formation and expansion. Obama, on the other hand, doesn't think or talk in terms of venture capital or capital investment, the bodybuilders of a thriving economy.
McCain's economic arsenal calls for making the tax cuts permanent, doubling the personal exemption for dependents, cutting the 35 percent corporate tax rate to 25 percent and repealing the alternative minimum tax that is squeezing the middle class with higher tax rates.
Obama's jobs agenda contains no broad-scale tax incentives to boost businesses and hiring. Instead, it is loaded with more federal spending for basic research and for "clean technologies" and "renewable energy" that he says will "create high-paying jobs." Don't hold your breath.
Indeed, he would raise the capital-gains tax on investors and push the top tax rate to nearly 40 percent, punishing the sector that is the wellspring of capital formation, economic opportunity and growth.
McCain is saying you can't have a healthy capitalist economy without capital. Obama is saying, "Give me the capital, and I'll do the investing."