Manipulation and perspective

From Coyote Blog:

Don't Panic
The best way to mobilize people is to make them panic. That is why so many institutions have incentives to may you panic over the environment, or global warming, or the threat of terrorism, or the economy. In most cases (Naomi Klein's hypothesis not-withstanding) these folks want you to get so worried you will give up something, either money or freedom or both.

Some kind of recession at this point is unavoidable, I guess. But in fact, we really haven't seen what I would call a real recession since the early 1980's. We've had a really long run, and now its time to cut back on that spending and board up the financial windows for a little while. The economy has to de-leverage itself some, and that is going to slow things down for a while. People keep talking about the Great Depression, and I don't see it. I don't even think its going to be the 1970's.

And some numbers:

In October of 1987, the stock market fell 22.6% in one day. If you date the current financial issues to about September 22, when the market closed around 11,000, then the market has fallen over these tumultuous weeks by 22.0% at last night's close -- dramatic, but still not as bad as the one day drop in '87.

Perspective is key here. Prudence too. Cash is a good thing...