IS THE GLASS half-empty? Or is the glass half-full?

The way the stock market dropped Thursday with the Dow down almost 300 points after a week of trying to recover from the panic lows of mid-July you'd think the glass was downright empty. In fact you'd think the empty glass had been dropped to the pavement from the top of the Empire State Building.

But I still think there's more than one way to look at the economy and the market. To do so stop panicking for a minute and take a closer look at the news that triggered Thursday's stock drop.

I can, however, see why it would be important to the real-estate agents whose lobbying organization, the National Association of Realtors, produces these statistics

I'm more interested in whether the median price of an existing home is rising or falling. Rising home prices would tell me that the housing crisis might be coming to an end. Falling prices would tell me the crisis is continuing.

On that front, the news seems bleak. CNNMoney reported, "home prices are falling further....the median price of a home sold in June fell to $215,100, down 6.1% from $229,000 a year earlier." The Wall Street Journal said that prices "dropped," and later in the same story amped it up to say that prices were "sliding."

I haven't seen a single media story that reported the truth: that the median price of an existing home rose in June. It went up. It was higher.

Let me be perfectly clear. The median existing home price was higher in June than it was in May, rising to $215,100 from $208,600. Oh, and while we're at it, the price was higher in May than it was in April. And guess what: It was higher in April than it was in March. And hey, while we're at it, it was higher in March than it was in February.

At the risk of boring you with what is, after all, only reality, I'll put it another way: The median price of an existing home bottomed in February, and has been rising every month since then. Fact.

Are you still with me? Here's another way of saying it: The median price of an existing home in June was 9.9% higher than in February.

So how has virtually every media outlet I've seen managed to turn that victory into defeat? Simple. They report that, in June, the median price was 6.1% lower than it was in June 2007.

That's how. But why? For what possible reason would virtually every media outlet in the world perpetuate the fiction that home prices are falling when in fact they are rising? Do they have some sinister motive? Do they all get together in a back alley somewhere right when these statistics are released, and agree among themselves to all tell the same lie at the same time?

The same thing happened on the same day with the data showing a jump in new claims for unemployment insurance. Here's the way the Wall Street Journal reported it: "The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits soared last week, matching a three-year high, suggesting no stabilization in sight for labor markets."

The number "soared"? Oh, come on, give me a break. It increased by 34,000, which is just about the average change week to week. It was up 9.1% over the previous week, but if that's "soared," then how come the median price for an existing home which at 9.9% went up even more wasn't reported as having "soared" too? Can only bad things "soar"?

Economists typically look at the four-week moving average of unemployment claims, to smooth out the bumps week to week. I didn't see any reporting that noted that the four-week moving average is now actually lower than it was a month ago. That's right: lower. I guess it must have "soared" lower.

And I sure didn't see any reporting that put the claims number in context. So allow me.

The Journal says that the labor markets need "stabilization." But has anybody noticed that the unemployment rate is only 5.5%? Historically, that's the average unemployment rate during economic expansions.

And has anybody noticed that, at 406,000, the number of unemployment claims reported Thursday is only about three-tenths of one percent of the U.S. labor force? That's only about two-one-hundredths of one percent more than the average during economic expansions. If we were in a real recession, history shows that on average we should expect about four-tenths of one percent of the labor force to file claims each month.

Let me simplify the numbers. Thursday the number of unemployment claims was 406,000. Typically in a recession, that number would be 633,000.

Yet it seems that everyone believes the overhyped negative news on the economy. Even those who know the truth the savvy institutional investors who are my clients, and the sophisticated economists at the Fed and other government agencies I talk to have become psychologically broken down by the relentless barrage of negatively spun economic news.

On Thursday I met with a Fed official who may be one of the two or three smartest people in an organization that is chock full of smart people. He agreed with me that the news wasn't objectively bad. But he couldn't make himself believe that it wasn't going to turn bad really bad tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after.

But why should it? We've been in a housing depression for two and a half years now. We've been in a credit crisis for a full year.

Where's the bad news? Where's the recession? Show me the money! Or in this case, the lack of money.

Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I just have to go with the facts, not the fantasies. I have to believe that stocks are cheap here, since it seems they are being priced by people in the grips of these exaggerated fears.

Also See:

• Today's Investor Sentiment Makes No Sense

• Financials Aside, Stocks Aren't in Bad Shape

• Get Out of Logic-Defying Oil While You Can