Every day, the media beat the drum of woe about how bad the economy is. There is so much wailing and gnashing of teeth that someone might get the idea that this is the first time since 1929 that our economy has been anything but roses and clover. A friend sent me this quote today. We were discussing it on Friday. It's a longish quote, but worth the time, so bear with me:
" I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. "
Doesn't this sound like today? You've probably heard something akin to this on the TV or radio this week. These words, however, were spoken by Howard Beale in the 1976 movie "Network". In January 1973, we had a catastrophic "stock market crash" with stocks losing 30 to 40% in value. The arabs instituted their oil embargo and oil costs quadrupled. The economy stalled. People lost jobs. Banks failed. It was the end of the world as we knew it. Wail. Gnash teeth. Howard Beale summed it up.
But, for all those people who sold their clothes and sat on their rooftops in order to watch the world burst into flames, it didn't. America struggled through a couple lean years of non-boom, but by the late 70s had recovered just fine.
Everyone needs to just shut up, sit down, and cool off. Don't sell your clothes and go sit on your roof. The world is NOT going to burst into flames. The "end of the world" has seen more sequels than Rocky. Stop being stampeded by the media.
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