Recession — Yes or BS?
By Kevin Donlin | February 18th, 2008
Turn on any TV set, open any newspaper, look at any news web site and the one word you’re most likely to see these days is RECESSION.
Now.
Technically, the last U.S. recession, defined as “a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters,” lasted less than one year, from 2000 to 2001.
Yet, that hasn’t stopped the mainstream media from predicting a recession pretty much every year since.
You know the old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day? Well, I get the distinct feeling that the most of the news outlets are broken clocks when it comes to telling us that it’s time to PANIC about housing prices, FEAR unemployment and generally WORRY about all things economic.
Example: Remember the recession of 2006? That’s the one that NEVER HAPPENED. Yet, that didn’t stop the media from reporting doom and gloom almost on a daily basis.
And don’t forget New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. He’s the “expert” who successfully predicted 6 of the 0 recessions that occurred in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007.
Are the media wrong now?
Well, you could put your trust in Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Lou Dobbs, or … some professional economists.
A survey of 62 economists conducted by Bloomberg News and released January 9 showed those economists predicting 1.5-percent growth in the first half of 2008. While that rate of expansion would be the weakest since the last nine months of 2001, it would still be growth. The economists also put the chances of recession in 2008 at 40 percent.
(Full story here: “Networks overwhelmingly predict recession in 2008, but ignore surveys of economists showing majority do not expect recession.”)
Bottom Line: If you let the media determine your economic mood and, by extension, your attitude about finding a job, you are S-C-R-E-W-E-D.
Why give anyone else that power over you?
Why let others determine your mood? Especially “experts” with as dismal a track record of being correct as the mainstream media’s. (Remember the population bomb, global cooling, swine flu, Y2K, SARS, bird flu, and other “disasters du jour” that never hurt you?)
Instead, why not be proactive and take back control of your attitude?
Why not trust in your own skills, your own work ethic and your own ability to produce on the job? These traits are 100% under YOUR control and constitute the ONLY real job security in this world.
In ANY economy — good or bad — there is money changing hands, companies with products and services to sell, and hiring managers with problems to solve. The moment you get in front of the right hiring manager and demonstrate that you can either 1) make more money or 2) save more money than you’re asking for in salary, that hiring manager will either 1) offer you an existing job or 2) create a job for you.
Knowing this fact — that the power to get a job and get ahead is entirely within your control – means you can laugh the next time some talking head on TV tells you to panic about a recession (real or imagined).
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