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As if the Canadian economy were not suffering enough already, we are now forced to endure what the Canadian Press is calling the “cauliflower crisis.” The combined effects of drought in California and the falling Canadian dollar have caused the price of cauliflower to triple since the fall. “It’s just like a big, total disaster,” according to an importer quoted in The Toronto Star.

If the disaster seems less than total to you, it is because you have failed to keep pace with the media, who have suddenly descended into one of their periodic fits of panic at the state of the economy — described in just the last 24 hours as “failing,” “dire,” “gloomy,” and “worsening,” not to mention teetering “on the edge of another downfall.”

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Things are not quite as hysterical as in France, where the government has just declared “a state of economic and social emergency,” but give them time.

And yet the evidence in support of this latest outbreak of mass despondency is scant. The stock market, to be sure, is off sharply, but the stock market is not the economy. Neither is the dollar. A falling dollar certainly imposes costs, such as pricier cauliflower, but it also brings benefits. It is not, in itself, a benchmark of our economic health.