Done With Bad News, Here Are Four Reasons To Be Optimistic

I hate saying this, but there were and are many faithful people in Argentina before the Peron dictatorship and throughout many fallen empires that have collapsed by poor decision making. I think you will be hard pressed to find a theological scholar that thinks faith has much to do with the return of the stock market. You will likely find the opposite, espousing the virtues of poverty. Keep looking up, but it is our god given talents that have given America the financial and physical security that we enjoy today. If we choose policy that fails to support those god given gifts, then we are taking our faith out of gods hands and putting it into the governments. We have to produce things better and more efficiently than everyone else to get the stock market and the rest of the economy back. Keep looking up but remember, we the voters, spenders, investors, workers, employers, retirees etc. are responsible for today's lawmakers' decisions because we put them there and we are letting them change the underlying principles of this country. We are responsible for giving our children an America that is safe and free first and foremost. We are truly blessed to be in this country and you will be loved by god unconditionally. My children are also a blessing for which I must nourish the body mind and soul. I feel the same about our country.

I hate saying this, but there were and are many faithful people in Argentina before the Peron dictatorship and throughout many fallen empires that have collapsed by poor decision making. I think you will be hard pressed to find a theological scholar that thinks faith has much to do with the return of the stock market. You will likely find the opposite, espousing the virtues of poverty. Keep looking up, but it is our god given talents that have given America the financial and physical security that we enjoy today. If we choose policy that fails to support those god given gifts, then we are taking our faith out of gods hands and putting it into the governments. We have to produce things better and more efficiently than everyone else to get the stock market and the rest of the economy back. Keep looking up but remember, we the voters, spenders, investors, workers, employers, retirees etc. are responsible for today's lawmakers' decisions because we put them there and we are letting them change the underlying principles of this country. We are responsible for giving our children an America that is safe and free first and foremost. We are truly blessed to be in this country and you will be loved by god unconditionally. My children are also a blessing for which I must nourish the body mind and soul. I feel the same about our country.

It is obvious that you lack wisdom and patience. There are those of us who have been through hell in our lives, and are still here, know and understand that when you are on your back the only way to look is up. You probably do not know this, but we live better than 99% of all the people in the world. We are in the top 1% of the wealthiest people of the world. Not of America, but of the World. Also I have faith in my God above my country. I Love my country and the freedom we have, but it is my faith that sustains me. I hope that you can look out and see that there are others who have it much worse than us.

Barbara, stay here and keep this debate interesting, I would hate to actually get back to work. But I agree with Matt84. Nobody knows that Senators Frank and Meeks threatened the race card on Bush's attempts to reel in FANNY/FREDDY. So it never happened and then collapsed under the man who caved to threats of racism. --Compassionate conservatism=Slower descent into socialism.

Barbara, It seems that everyone is forgetting that the ALL TIME HIGH FOR THE DOW was in 2007, six years into the Bush administration. Inflation and unemployment were near all time lows, AND THE DOW REACHED IT'S ALL TIME HIGH....HMMMMM..... THEN.... the Democratic congress was elected. Look at the charts, it's astounding. I want to be hopeful, but the Obama plan just does more of what got us into trouble in the first place. I was in banking (before retirement) in the mid 90's, and we were mandated to make low income loans. THIS is where the seed was planted. This is what is coming back to haunt us today. The Bush administration tried to pull in the reins on Freddie and Fannie in '02 and '04, issueing warnings, but they went unheeded. It's time to stop the Bush bashing and look forward to serious ways to fundamentally fix the economy. I'm afraid that the current plans are fostering more government dependence.

Marc 2679 nails it. If we were dealing uniquely with a market downturn, your comments would be applicable. However, the current administration's thinking and actions make past rules inoperative -- we don't know which industries their tinkering will destroy, we don't know which enterprise they will nationalize next -- and as for health care, who knows the impact universal health care will have on our Pfizers, Mercks and Johnson & Johnsons? I don't think that any industry is safe in the current climate. We must, must, turn Congress around in 2010. It's our only option.

You're right! We should be positive! The economy positively sucks. It will positively get worse, I believe much worse. BO is positively adding to the problem. As the great American statesman, Will Rogers once said, "When you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING." We just elected an excavator. Buying in now will get you in on the way to the basement. It is NOT a 6' deep pool. It's quicksand and no one has felt the bottom yet.

I know many people are out of work. Our family has faced that recently. My husband did not get a pay-check for months. He has a PhD., and took a job doing lawn work for $7 per hour. I have a college degree, and got a job cleaning houses. We are now both employed at better jobs, have sold our house, bought a new one, and are completely out of debt. It's still possible in this economy to live debt free. We rarely eat out, we drive old, but reliable vehicles, have four children that we are trying to instill personal responsibility in. No, we didn't vote for the current president, and certainly do not agree with his idea of the government taking on the responsibility of making sure everyone has a home(whether they can afford it or not), health care, abortion availability, food stamps, a college education. We are very thankful for some financial principles we learned early in our marriage - namely don't borrow money. We've never made more than $60,000 a year, but have been able to buy two homes with no mortgage. We saved until we could pay cash.

WOW! I'm impressed. Something positive on FOX. There is hope for the nation after all.

Barbara --Our country has not been going down for 8 years it has been going down for 100 years. Our economic expansion has hinged on convincing mothers that they are enslaved in their home by a misogynistic society, but working for someone else is liberating and exploring your full potential. Couple that with Kaynesian economics, deficit spending and time-shared currency and you have temporary bolsters to the economy that cannot be replaced when they are stretched too far--THEY POP. --Women in the work force is not a bubble that can pop but created a quick infusion of productivity and consumption that cannot be repeated.

Barbara --Our country has not been going down for 8 years it has been going down for 100 years. Our economic expansion has hinged on convincing mothers that they are enslaved in their home by a misogynistic society, but working for someone else is liberating and exploring your full potential. Couple that with Kaynesian economics, deficit spending and time-shared currency and you have temporary bolsters to the economy that cannot be replaced when they are stretched too far--THEY POP. --Women in the work force is not a bubble that can pop but created a quick infusion of productivity and consumption that cannot be repeated. Dumbari, Reagan and Bush overspent, No-one saw a need to live within a budget, investing on credit for growth is fine, (it is why we DON'T want to nationalize the banks), But, if you are adding expenditures without a plan to grow the revenue, you eventually run out of money. We are out of money!! When China cannot or will not lend and the government consumes the available credit domestically, their will be NO GROWTH IN THE US ECONOMY. The governement adding social obligations just furthers the descent of American Productivity. Produce less, sell less, take in less. People will reminisce about the days when the stock market was going down but milk and gas were still affordable, and when the rich got ridiculously rich but the standard of poverty by todays standards becomes an aspiration for tomorrows standards

Barbara- You need to go on you tube and look up the video of Pres Bush and Sen John McCain Warning the democrats who HAD CONTROL ON THE HILL FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS!!, about the Fannie and Freddy mess and how the peril of lending to minorities and non minorities that did not have the means to pay for these loans would be "CATASTROPHIC". I think its funny that you and every other crazy liberal feel fine Blaming Bush for all your problems for the last eight years and then telling me not to blame Obama the hack when The stock market begun to make a major nose dive after Nov 08. To say that now its all about checks and balances in our government and that there is such a thing as personal responsibility now, as to why i should not put all the blame on obama is ludicrous. So i guess in the last eight years there was no checks and balances or personal responsibility. I love how you have your double standards. Please check your facts before you start spouting your liberal propaganda. Go post on the communist news network (CNN) with your liberal delusions. That is the station that worships their president the messiah!

Watching Dodd on the tube asking where the Fed was while the poor people of Bridgeport were being victimized by predatory lenders. My question is where was Sen. Dodd ? Oh thats right, he was refinancing his house with CountryWide in the "friends of Angelo" program that saved him $80,000.00 .

Things are bad. That's for sure. But all the negativity is astounding and not very helpful..... What gets my goat is that all this bad news is being pushed by the same "wise" souls that only a year ago were singing the praises of our incredibly strong economy.

Brian is quite right here, though it's hard for many of us to see any silver linings in this mess. Every now and then we just need to step back, take a deep breath and remember that there is only one end of the world, and this ain't it.

Brian I'm glad to see someone pointing the finger at congress. Congress is more than Bush for this mess, and the sad part for us is they are still in their positions, Bush is gone. The very people that approved Bush's spending are the very ones casting blame, yet they are turning around and doing it again only from a different angle, and the much of the mainstream media is going along with it this time, because their media darling is now the President. And to Barbara you are absolutely correct about people living beyond their means, and now those of us that didn't are going to pay for it for a long time, because our government living WAY beyond it's means with it's wasteful spending, and too much of the TARP and "Stumulus" are going towards things that are not stimulating anything but pet projects. If we want this fixed we the people need to start voting with our heads out of the sand. This country can recover, but not until We the People take it back, and hopefully we are not too late.

Barbara - for eight years this country great experienced growth and added 6 million more jobs to the economy. Our current fiasco was brought in part by greedy financiers, but mostly by incompetent power-happy politicians who forced banks to lend money to people who could not pay it back. The politicians (mostly Democrats) refused to acknowledge the impending disaster and rein in their pet Fannie and Freddy cash-cows. and as for Obama's "stimulus" package - nothing more than a massive plan to make governement bigger. If he really wanted to stimulate the economy, all he has to do is provide immediate relief by drastic tax cuts across the board - now THAT would get the economy going again.

Yes of course , Brian , the Congress is to blame too....but this went on and on and it seems if Mr. Bush was in charge or Mr. Cheney they should have done something to stop it....Pres. Obama voted against the war. That cost us a lot of money. And people voted Bush in again even with all the warning signs. But with that said, and blame to go around, Pres. Obama is trying to do something. He is cracking down on Wall Street bonuses and said he will be watching how the money from the bailout is spent and calling out any mayors, governors who are abusing the money. At least he is trying to do something and I get tired of everyone blaming someone who isn't even in office a month. He is intelligent and telling us all to take responsibility....it is the peoples' fault as well. Im looking forward to hearing his speech tonight.

The President i s supposed to at least attempt to help Americans, mostly morally, but Obama is the biggest doomsday forecaster the world has ever seen. Everything is bad, everything is a crisis, the world is ending, no one will survive! Only Barack Obama may be able to save a few hundred of us (all ACORN members no doubt). This guy is the biggest farce on the face of the planet. He hasn't a clue as to what to do or what is really happening (much like Bush eh?). With the triumvirate of Comrades Obama, Pelosi and Reid America is really in for some hard times and social changes that most Americans have never envisaged.

I am trying to be positive. The sad reality of the current situation is that the government has committed to financial bailouts that they won't be able to follow through on. Tax revenues will be plummetting while expenditures will be sky-rocketing. It has happend dozens of times around the world in the last 100 years. The government will no longer be able to secure loans and will have to resort to printing unsecured $$. This will result in hyperinflation and the end of the current US economy. The good news is that America will be forced (on an indivudual basis) to stand on their own two feet once again or die. There will be turmoil and probably starvation. But the resulting population will be strong and independent as our fore-fathers had meant it to be. It will be one heck of a ride, but our grand children will write books about the new "Greatest Generation"

All the people of this nation only have to return to the biblical principles upon which it was founded and watch how fast we recover. GREED, PRIDE, CORRUPTION ON A MAJOR SCALE, AND SELF-SERVING ANTI-CHRISTIAN PEOPLE THAT FEED ON THIS NATION AND GIVE OUT NOTHING BUT CORRUPT IDEOLOGY IS WHAT HAS AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE WHAT BRINGS AMERICA TO THE BRINK OF DISASTER!!!!!!!

I love the way everyone blames Pres. Obama...For eight years our country was headed downhill....No one or the media blasted the administration then. Of course after spending billions on a war and rebuilding Iraq and letting mortage brokers and Wall Street go wild, we are in debt. And Pres. Obama is trying to create jobs by rebuilding our own country and withdrawing slowly from Iraq to save money and all we have our the naysayers. Perhaps if people hadn't lived beyond their means we also wouldn't be in this situation. Credit card debt, buying homes way beyond our means, everyone needs big screen tvs, cell phones with all kinds of fancy gadgets, huge SUVs, homes with 6 bedrooms and baths and we wonder why this happened?

Productivity is the key. No other nation can match our productivity. I agree that we just need to work our way out and not give up hope.

We all have a choice of what we embrace....every day!! Let's look at being positive rather than negative. Personally, I'm loving to hear someone with a better outlook than what the slanted NEWS media would portray. As it has been said...Life is 10% of what happens...and 90% of how you react to it!

The market is still over-priced for forward earnings. They will be a lot worse than analysts project. Unemployed people do not buy as much stuff. Unemployment has not yet come anywhere near its peak.