There is Good Economic News Out There

I have really, really cut down on the number of hours spent reading the newspaper, watching the news, and listening to talk radio, because, to put it simply, it is depressing. All I hear about is how the economy is in the tank, and it won't be long until we are all eating grass clippings from the local park.

All this depressing news has really got me thinking. Is my job stable, will I be able to provide for my wife and new baby?

Despite all of this terrible news, things do seem to be going just fine for me. Gas is cheap, that is saving me a bundle. I had enough money to get my family Christmas presents. We have plenty of food to eat. I have enough money saved up to pay off all the maternity bills when we finally get them. Things really are going just fine, despite all the news.

Since it is Christmas eve, I wanted to give people something that they can read and feel good about, something to cheer them up. I asked people at the freerepublic.com message boards, if they had any good economic news. A lot of it was joke cracking, some was not entirely positive, but there really was a lot of good news from our fellow Americans. Here is what some of them had to say:

On a good note, my wife has stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses, now that they defaulted on their McMansion. - OB1kNOb

For that matter, stock prices being down is good too. I am a net saver, so cheaper stocks mean I will get better value when I buy stock now. I’ve actually held off for years and left money in cash or CDs, but now the market looks to be at a fair price and probably a decent place to put money to work for a change. – babble-on

Actually the company I work for got a couple of new contracts within the last couple of months. 2009 looks good. After that who knows. – McGruff

Well, I am reviewing my 2009 budget and business plan with my boss this afternoon and I am projecting an increase in sales of 10%! So there is a nice rosy forecast. –shempy

In America, still, no matter the economic climate, if you have a good idea, the talent to develop it and the drive to market it, you can ALWAYS succeed. ALWAYS. –JennysCool

My business is doing VERY well, but then we set our prices to reflect a poor economy, and we work for FAR less than the national average we take a little from a lot. We expect over 50% growth this year ‘09. –Enigo54

Yes indeed! The money that I put into my 401K at work is buying more shares of stock per dollar now that the stock market is down. If the economy rights itself, I'll be in better shape than had the stock market not tanked. But that's a lot of "ifs!" –avacado

Nintendo sold 800,000 Wiis in the US during the last week of November. I think that is a pretty good indicator that most ordinary people aren’t panicking yet. I work on the processor for the Wii so I hope my job is safe. –Straight Vermonter

I work at Westinghouse (nuclear power plants). One of our owners (Shaw) is building a large facility in Louisiana to manufucture components. We have the worldwide capacity of large forging facilities booked though the next several years, and there is a possibility that we will create a domestic capability if orders come in as expected. We fell short of our hiring goal for 2008. We have an aggressive hiring goal for 2009. We are opening new offices in North Carolina and San Jose. We continue to dominate the Services market, due to some significant recent screw-ups by our competitors. –kidd

Your good news: Everything will be okay! (Dont believe me? Just watch the news right after Obama is sworn in!) The economy is bad, but it isnt as bad as they are portraying on the news. (Except for maybe the banking/auto industries - and that is their own fault.) The media want you to believe that we are on the verge of total collapse. Then after Obama takes office the new Ministry of Propaganda (formerly the media) will tell you that things are looking up. (Not that anything changed - except perception.) All hail Obama!! –Villany_Inc

Where I live: Malls are packed. Car dealerships are busy. Don’t even try to go out to eat somewhere, its too crowded. My company is expanding. I just bought a HDTV after I got all my Christmas shopping done. My brother bought a new Jeep Commander. (he contracts residential construction). The shopping district in my town is impossible to get around. Too many people out at the stores. –envisio

Whenever the media trumpets everything is one way and the masses believe them, it is a tipping point and whatever that issue is is about to change. I think this is happening now. Got a flier in my mailbox offering condos for $169,000 with financing at 4.5% & no closing costs. Extras included. Guaranteed delivery in 5 months....and so on. Not a vacation spot around here. Just residential. As someone already said, those who watched their money over the past 3-4 years, have a lot of bargains coming to market. The economy will adjust. The good news is most of us live in the good old USA, which in spite of all the doom and gloom you hear (a lot on FR) is still the best place and time to be alive in all of recorded history. –JeanLM

So far the only thing we are seeing is a lot of fat cutting. That in itself is good new. I hate waste. The best way to cheer up is put down the media and get into your city. Unless it is Detroit, you will probably see lots of people busily going about their lives as always. I find Burger King to be very encouraging. The workers there care nothing about economic news and don't own portfolios. The customers there are everything from the needy to yuppies. I don't know why but just seeing everyone busy really cheers me up. –DungeonMaster

We’re doing fine. My husband works for an extremely-low-end retail chain ... what one would call a recession-proof job. We bought a house we could afford even in a downturn. We have a car and a van paid off, and a reasonable payment on the truck. The Salvation Army Store has new (to me) Fundamentalist Frump Frocks on the rack every couple of weeks. Wal-mart’s just up the street. Eight kids, going on nine, seven pets, not counting the fish, no worries. Merry Christmas! –Tax-chick

Yes. I moved all of my retirement into bonds and securities last November and have ridden out this entire mess at 4-5% interest. In addition, due to a large decrease in demand, and the prospect for the US drilling much more of its own oil and becoming much more energy independent, OPEC's prices have dropped drastically and here in Idaho we are in the $1.30s for gas. Hope it holds, but would not count on it too long after Obama comes in. Finally, with interest rates so low, and if you're credit rating is good, there are beaucoup offers out there for zero percent interest for 12-15 months for credit, allowing people to transfer higher rate debt onto much lower...and then going to 8-9% interest after the introductory period. Lots of silver linings like that out there. –Jeff Head

I don't buy the "good news" angle...

My perspective is that the international financial system has become largely a house of cards, with hundreds of trillions of dollars in paper or electronically created "assets" that are, in the end, not backed up with much of anything having real value. It is a charade, an illusion, a facade that people who are aware of this and who have a stake in sustaining the illusion cannot admit or disclose because of the risk that the game of musical chairs will stop, and in the scramble it will become evident that there are hardly any real "chairs" there to sit on.

Just for one simple example, consider gold. There is real gold; hard physical metal in various shapes and forms. And then there is "paper" gold - financial instruments - options contracts with long and short positions; contracts to deliver gold on certain dates. This paper gold is not backed up by any gold at all - just "promises" to deliver gold if ultimately required to do so. There is 40 times more in "paper" gold - contracts for gold delivery - than there is in fact actual physical metal gold held by people on the entire earth.

This game, this illusion of value exchange, goes along just fine so long as people mutually trade those paper contracts in buy-sell transactions (making $ on average through such transactions), but when other sectors of our financial system and economy unravel to the point that people start demanding contractual delivery of the physical gold (rather than continuing to accept instead more contracts or paper/electronic money), the "value" disappears into thin air with defaults when COMEX closes the gold delivery window.

And gold is just one simple, easily understood example. Mortgage-related "derivatives" are another, even larger example where there is huge supposed book and market value in these paper agreements, but the underlying true redeemable value for tens of trillions of dollars in the agreements is vapor - just waiting to be uncovered and written down to little at all. There are many more, less well understood examples, of huge paper financial assets holding up the increasingly unsupportable lie that those paper assets hold real value when in fact they are not backed by anything of much ultimate value.

This is not a good time to be holding unbacked paper investments. The house of cards is made of paper, and rain is beginning to fall on that paper.

Of course, nobody knows when the game of financial musical chairs will end - maybe it will play on for a while. Maybe it won't ... In the meantime, central banks throughout the world are doing their best to keep the game going a little longer; pumping out new currency and electronic funds in enormous, unprecedented large quantities to avoid the collapse that is building momentum.

Unfortunately, playing the music louder and louder just can't keep the game going on indefinitely.

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