The U.S. economy is stronger than anyone thinks, but the doom-and-gloom attitude in the national media threatens to cause more problems than might happen otherwise.

U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt brought that message to Carterville on Tuesday as he toured MSW Inc. Restaurant Finishings, a company owned and operated by two Carthage High School graduates, Curt McCoy and John Stark.

Blunt and a group of about 20 business leaders and local media toured MSW’s plant, where about 80 employees make restaurant benches, booths, tables and other furnishings in their plant on County Road 200 east of Carterville.

Blunt spoke of MSW’s ability to compete, using American workers and American ingenuity in an industry where many of its competitors have moved oversees.
He said he hopes that changes in the tax code included in the recent economic stimulus package will encourage restaurants to remodel sooner and more often, providing more business for MSW.

Blunt also accused the national media of talking the country into an economic downturn.

“What I’m concerned about now in this country is everyone in the national news media wants to talk all the time about how now is not the time to buy a house or how unemployment, which is at about 4.8 percent is somehow a historic problem,” Blunt said. “It’s actually at a historic low number by any historic standards but we’re going to talk ourselves into an economic problem if we’re not careful.”

Blunt admitted that fuel prices were high and that was causing other prices to increase, but he said other indicators pointed to a strong economy.

“The job situation in Missouri is a lot better than it was a few years ago,” Blunt said. In the month of February, our unemployment in Missouri actually went down, it’s a little above the national average, but lower than it was earlier this year. Housing sales surprised everybody by being significantly higher on an annualized basis than anybody thought. Try to find that story anywhere.”

Ron Pence, vice president of Arvest Bank, who accompanied Blunt on the tour of MSW, said the housing slump has hit this area, but other indicators point to an economy that is still growing.

“It is not strong, but it is not slow at this particular point,” Pence said. “It is a fairly normal economy right now, the only thing that’s probably out of the ordainary right now is housing. But you still see businesses investing in town, they’re expanding, you see the casino bringing jobs in and all of that kind of stuff. The economy is still growing, but it’s changing.”

Pence said people are having trouble selling houses right now, but that would likely mean good things for hardware and home improvement companies as people work to improve the homes they will likely keep a little longer than expected.

He said the rising prices of fuel, food and medicine are taking a bite out of economic growth.

“Food is important, people know that that’s something they have to have,” Pence said. “Food, medicine, gas, those three things are things people have to have first and if they’re all going up in price, then sure it can have an affect on the disposable income.”

Curt McCoy, president of MSW, said his company is doing what it can to compete, including adopting newer, leaner manufacturing techniques.

“It’s a tough market out there,” McCoy said. “The congressman did mention the economy is off, but at the same time I think we have to be careful not to talk ourselves into something that is much worse than it really is. Our stance at MSW is that maybe we’ve got one or two customers that are down for the year, so we have to go find someone who is doing something.”

For more about MSW, see their Web site at http://www.mswinc.com.