To Sum Up

Image via WikipeWhy bother?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099087568542.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

"You resisted the siren call of plastic teaser APRs, dutifully living within your means to store money for a rainy day. You never took out an interest-only mortgage. Never had to pawn the copper pipes from your exurban McMansion to pay the reset on your liar loan. Your credit score would have gotten you into Harvard at age 12.

"Good for you! Your reward: injurious savings yields, inflationary rot, and election-season neglect, all served up with a dollop of institutional insecurity."

...

"A one-year CD that earned 3.75% at this point in 2007 was offered for as little as 1.92% in April, before inching up to its present 2.38%. It's hardly a secret that banks are only able to pay out such pittances thanks to depositors' knee-jerk desire for security: "Hey, I might be earning crumbs on my cash, but at least I'm not losing money.

"Sure you are. Wholesale inflation has soared 9.8% in the past 12 months, the highest clip since 1981. The more widely cited consumer price index jumped to 5.6%. In other words, while your saved buck was adding 2 cents or so on one end (and even less after taxes), three times as much was getting singed off the other end of that dollar bill."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/15/mccain-fundamentals-of-th_n_126445.html

"On the campaign trail in Jacksonville, Florida, the Senator [McCain] declared this morning that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong"

There, feel better?
Still worried? How about this then:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202415.html

"It's a virus -- and it's spreading. Do a Google News search for "since the Great Depression," and you come up with more than 4,500 examples of the phrase's use in just the past month.

"But that doesn't make any of it true. Things today just aren't that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression -- or exaggerated Depression comparisons."

-- Donald Luskin, John McCain advisor