The Cynics Have Been Discredited, so Where Do We Turn?

. There were always two ways to approach taking a test. During a test, some students are busy writing on their papers, lost in thought. Others are looking around, trying to steal an answer from their neighbors. Many have gone through school borne on the wings of stolen information. Investing in the Stock Market used to be a matter of researching the quality of a company: how much money have they made; what is the potential for their product; what is the quality of their leadership; what is the market likely to do to their product? Of late, though, this has become too much trouble for investors. They have found it easier to slide their eyes towards their fellow-investors. Studying the stock market itself was a substitute for studying the market. The questions became: what stocks shall I buy, so that I can sell it at a profit, rather than what stocks shall I buy, so that I can collect dividends on them? The analogy might not be convincing to an investor. To them, copying off their fellow investors is a legitimate and responsible thing to do, and researching company quality is left to professional reporters; a sort of Cliff's Notes approach to investment. Many investors are really too important to concern themselves with research, and they can afford to hire underlings to do this research for them. It really should have worked beautifully for ever. At the time of writing, the country is faced with two major problems: increasing loss of jobs, and increasing loss of houses. Banks, which were the major resource for keeping money safe during times of moderate chaos, have become actual agents of chaos. The ECONOMY, that abstraction that served to simplify reasoning in circumstances in which individual eccentric behavior was averaged out to concentric aggregate behavior, is no longer a useful concept, because the eccentricities are no longer averaging out. Too few people are acting reasonably, so that prediction is unreliable. As always, the people will turn to the idealists. Idealists must guide us through times when all mistakes are costly, and big mistakes will be very costly. The country has turned to the Democrats, and the Democrats have turned to President Obama. If he succeeds, it will be a bigger accomplishment than that of FDR, and the people will probably forget the mistakes of Reagan and two generations of Bushes in their relief. But if times turn really bad, we will all turn to the calm, reasonable voices of our neighbors. What will they say? What will we say? There are no big easy answers. There are only small, hard choices.

• Think for yourself. This is no time for cribbing. Second-hand, stolen advice is highly suspect, and I'm not giving any.
• Keep healthy. Eat carefully, dress warm, look after the kids; this is no time to get sick.
• Don't give in to paranoia. Panic and paranoia only make a bad situation worse.
• Look after your neighbors. In bad times, nobody can make it alone. In good times no one can, either. In bad times it's just more obvious.
• Don't choose one dramatic thing to do. Of course, for some special people, there may be some spectacular thing that they must do. For most of us, a little of everything makes better sense. Buy American, but also buy foreign. Grow food in your back yard, but also buy something from the grocers. They need the jobs, too!
• Don't shortchange the kids on education. To come out of this depression, and to live well after the depression is over, a good education is important.
• Be moderate. Don't only save, don't only spend. There is no magic formula.

Most of all, don't simply stew over the state of the economy; it just isn't helpful. Keep away from destructive vices, but by all means indulge in non-destructive vices, if there are any! I'd say, as personal advice, have as good a time as you can, without waiting for the depression to end. As John Lennon said: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. Don't get too busy making other plans. Don't look for some miraculous big leader to lead you out of this mess. We are the leaders. When the cynics bite the dust, the idealists take their turn. Archimedes