About the only talking point Joe Biden didn’t repeat in his debate with Paul Ryan was the one lionizing President Obama for having saved the country from another Great Depression. Biden used it in his speech at the Democratic convention, as did others, and it remains a hardy perennial of Obama lore. The president, ever immodest, has credited himself for this achievement. Last year Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told him, it’s “your legacy.” Andrew Sullivan, in a recent Newsweek cover story likening Obama to Ronald Reagan, twice credited the president with having “prevented a second Great Depression.”

This is the canard that never dies—despite the total absence of facts to back it up. What’s surprising is that Republicans, conservatives, and the media have done so little to stash the Obama-as-savior claim in the attic of political untruths. Correcting that oversight is long overdue.