From the dropping stock market to the rising prices of natural gas, the brake lights are appearing, and we're about to slow to a walking pace. Needless to say, this is not very good news for those of us who will be graduating in two years, right about the time the economy will have completed its swan dive. To me, the most frustrating thing about this whole situation is that it appears to be nothing more than a self-fulfilled prophecy. During the presidential fiasco in Florida last November, a commonly heard refrain was that whoever wins was going to inherit a bad economy anyway. The editorial pages of high-circulation papers such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal have been filled with discussion of this topic during the last three months as well.
Economies are strange things, and just as frustrating as traffic.
They're unpredictable and uncontrollable, and so often the problem is not material, but rather psychological. And when people think bad thoughts, bad things usually happen. Nothing is more annoying than sitting in a traffic jam for an hour only to find out it was caused by some guy who slowed down to look at a wreck on the side of the road. The same may turn out to be the case for the American economy. But so much of this recession is fueled by how investors feel.