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By
Bruce Bressack
03/12/2003
Boomers
After months and months of negative press, gloom & doom, and 'talking-heads-talking-dirt', we all just finally gave in.
That’s right; you twisted our arm until we had to say “Uncle”. Are you proud now? You pessimistic bastards won again!
Consumers are a hardy breed. We have real lives, and we just want to get along, raise our families, and be happy. We’re also willing to “spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t really need”, because that’s how we do our part to help the economy grow.
But, when the media tells you day-after-day how horrible things are, and how much worse it’s bound to get, after awhile you just start believing it. And once you’ve stoked the 'fires-of-pessimism', it’s downhill from there.
That’s not to say that everything’s perfect, or that real problems don’t exist in the economy. But, you have to give some credence to the notion that the 'constant proliferation of negative news is affecting consumer confidence'.
There’s at least one person who has a different perspective on the state-of-the-economy. On Monday, March 10th, Milton Friedman [Economist, and winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics] was interviewed by CNBC. Here's the gist of what he said ---
"We’re doing OK, the economy is growing, interest rates are the lowest in 40+ years, unemployment is not that high in historical terms, and inflation is low."
Now granted, Milton ain’t a media type (whose hair is so slick you can snowboard off the ridge), but he has won the Nobel Prize...and, he was both lucid and reassuring.
Maybe, just maybe, Milton knows what he’s talking about.
Bruce Bressack is a singer-songwriter, producer and freelance writer currently living in New England. He’s a 52 year old baby-boomer, ex-Yuppie, ex-New Yorker, guitar-slingin’, piano-slappin’, finally ‘retired’, television tube lover...
Bruce Bressack can be reached at bbressack@hippopress.com