“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” With this impassioned line from the classic 1976 movie, Network, Peter Finch galvanized his audience and eventually all of America. A few weeks ago, I declared that I was “depressed as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  Enough already with the bad news.  We all get it. It’s time to put a stop to the unrelenting flow of stories about jobs lost and retirement funds decimated. Yes, these are serious matters, but the media is obsessed with the global economic decline and scaring everybody half to death. Guess what? We are in a negative feedback loop that is simply making matters worse. It’s time to fight back – it’s time to cheer up, America.

 

Let’s join together in this effort to break out of the vicious circle of economic decline. If all of us who have jobs and all those retirees who did not give all their money to Bernie would simply spend a few more dollars each week, it would be a bigger, quicker acting economic stimulus package than Congress could ever devise.

 

I know it’s difficult to look at the world optimistically at a time like this, but now is when it’s most needed. There is ample historical evidence that we – tend to extrapolate our most recent experiences endlessly into the future. When the stock market is at its peak, investors invariably take on more risk and assume that unreasonably high rates of return will be earned year after year with no end in sight. And when the market is at a low point, those same investors assume that there will be nothing but bad news for the rest of their lives and that the market will go to zero – it’s only a matter of time. People continue to forecast the recent past into the future until one day it stops working. But the forecasting track record is terrible. We all know that previous economic expansions led to economic contractions. We all know that previous bear markets were followed by bull markets. Unfortunately, by believing our own erroneous forecasts, we turn them into self-fulfilling prophecies that exaggerate the natural economic cycles. It’s up to us to cut that process short, to reverse the added damage we do to ourselves. How do we do that? We cheer up. We remember that better times are inevitable and may be just around the corner.

 

We can do this. One at a time we can cheer ourselves up and the way to do that is to cheer up someone else. Invite some friends for spaghetti and Chianti in the kitchen. Take a coworker out for a drink. Invite everyone you know to join our movement, “CHEER UP AMERICA”. Tell them to visit www.cheerupamerica.com and become part of the fun and part of the solution. Our website is where you will find only good news, fun distractions and ideas to cheer up. Check back often for your daily dose of good cheer, and participate!  Comment on this blog, post your thoughts on the forum and commit a random act of cheeriness.