Who's this Rice character? Is she anybody?

Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was widely ridiculed for his claim that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong” on the very day that two of Wall Street’s major banking institutions collapsed. In an interview with CNBC yesterday, however, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed McCain, stating that the “fundamentals of the U.S. economy are strong”:

QUESTION: How does a United States in the middle of a global financial crisis affect diplomatic efforts around the world and your efforts? […]

RICE: Everybody understands that this is a very specific, indeed once-in-a-lifetime " well, we certainly hope " circumstance. But people have confidence in the United States. As the President has said, this is a financial crisis, but the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are strong.