“Again with the negative waves, Moriarty!”

Again with the negative waves!

Once again, the media are filled with negative vibes about our economy, utterly heedless of the fact that the central tenet of the Warthen School of Economics is that “the economy” is an utterly abstract and theoretical thing built from collective emotions, and that the greatest single cause of “bad economic conditions” is negative thoughts regarding the economy.

This time, my beef is with this headline in the Columbia Regional Business Report:

Final accounting for S.C. fiscal ’10 paints grim financial picture

Thing is, the story (by my old friend Jim Hammond) is actually about what already happened with the state budget, which is fine. What gets me is that the headline implies bad economic times ahead. At least that’s the way I erroneously read it. And headlines are enough to make things bad.

To end with the words with which Oddball ends the above serious of clips, Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

And yeah, I’m kind of being facetious here. I just wanted an excuse to run the Oddball clips from “Kelly’s Heroes.” This, by the way, was what I was looking for earlier when I ran across the Kerouac clip.

5 thoughts on ““Again with the negative waves, Moriarty!””

  1. Kathryn Fenner

    The only thing we have to fea-yeh is fea-yeh itself, right?

    I think there is reality behind some economic conditions–there is a maximum level of productivity–and you can spend the output on guns or butter. There’s plenty of mass psychology, but there are (or are not) actual widgets, too.

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