The Worst Fear Is Fear Itself

It has been headline news in recent weeks that gloomy outlook of economy is spreading everywhere. People worry that their investments will keep nosediving into the bottomless swirl and eventually dry up. What if we suddenly become unemployed because of the economic slump, will we have enough savings to pay the rent, mortgage, grocery and everyday essentials? What about family vacation, college education for our kids and retirement plans? Will they become unreachable goals due to the global economic slump?

Yes, fear has no physical presence, yet its psychological impact upon people is tremendous, not to mention the fact that it is contagious in a deadly way. If we keep on talking about how bad it will become, it can only become worse rather than better. Even though the statistics speaks itself very loudly that we are in recession, fear can only create frantic reactions from investors, which can only worsen the economic numbers and it does no good as far as improving the economy is concerned. For example, some critic says that GM stock will diminish to almost nothing. Doesn’t this create a scenario of shareholders dumping their GM stocks? And you can imagine that the result of it is catastrophic, because 2.9 million people’s jobs are in danger. By the way, I do not hold any stocks, so my judgement is impartial. The economic situation applies to real estate as well. If we keep saying that the real estate prices will dip xx percent next year, doesn’t it hold people off from buying houses? And when the housing industry (8.5% overall GDP) tumbles, along with auto industry (12% of manufacturing GDP), do you think we still have a chance as a nation? I am not saying that we shouldn’t worry about all these things. What I am saying is that excessive fear about these things will do the economy no good at all. In order to overcome the fear, a constructive rescue plan has to be implanted. In my opinion, keeping the jobs abundance is the foremost priority. On one hand the government has to come up with a plan to save big industries ( not to sacrifice tax payers’ money as an exchange, but ask the industries to slowly pay back), and on the other hand the government has to keep creating jobs, either through building infrastructure or so-called green jobs. I think only through these measures, we can finally see a ray of hope to conquer fear. Yes, we can, as Mr. Obama said in his acceptance speech.

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