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Trying times for optimists
A guy named Gil Stern had a pretty good line about the value of optimists and pessmists: An optimist invented the airplane. A pessimist invented the parachute.
Wall Street could use one of each these days.
I try to stay sunny about the economy. No matter what we’re going through right now, I think things are going to pick up in 2009, once we have new leadership in the White House.
I don’t think it even matters much to the market who wins the election. Investors are so ready for a change from the past eight years of misery they’re convinced that happier times are just around the bend. They can’t get here soon enough.
The optimist in me remembers that the Dow bottomed out at 7,500 six years ago. In October of last year, we hit an all-time high of more than 14,000. The optimist tells me to be patient. Things will turn around again.
We sure have our work cut out for us though, don’t we? In addition to fighting two wars, trying to keep gasoline prices under $4 a gallon and figuring out what to do about health care, the new president now is going to have to keep banks from going under.
I’m 50 years old. A lot of folks my age and younger have pretty much given up on the idea that Social Security will take care of us in our old age. Many of us have sacrificed to put money into 401(k)s. That’s where the growth is, right?
I don’t even want to log onto the Web site that tells me how my mutual fund is doing any more. But what do you do? If you stop investing now, there’s no way you’ll pull back up. So we keep the contributions rolling out of our checks every payday and hope for good news from Wall Street.
I’m still an optimist. But more and more I’m looking around for a guy who knows where the parachutes are stored.
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