ABC News:
ABC News' Dan Harris recently reported on the phenomenon of pessimism porn, the epidemic of doom-and-gloom financial reporting.
Filed by Marcus Baram
The Slide Into Addiction to Economic Pessimism -- New York Magazine
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Pessimism Porn? Economic Forecasts Get Lurid - ABC News
YouTube - MSM Accuses Gerald Celente and Peter Schiff of pessimism ...
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Was it pessimism porn when Peter Schiff rightly predicted the recession and the bust of the housing market?
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Can the truth be pessimism porn?
When you live in a country full of Pollyannas, anything that sounds negative gets labeled as pessimism. The fact is that many who are labeled pessimists are the true realists. Things don't get better because you put on a happy face, sorry guys.
What will it get us trying to save Capitalism? Would it be less painful to convert to a new system?
There are economists who have crunched the numbers and feel the economy will continue to fall. We all know the 5 top banks are basically insolvent with the huge number of toxic debt they are not exposing for the public to evaluate. Only Geithner has been allowed to stress test this toxic crap. There are no independent auditor types being allowed to examine the bank's books. Elizabeth Warren even says that we have been given a raw deal by Bernanke and the rest.
The dark critics of this economy have legitimacy. Yet we must all keep in mind that the media must sell soap in order to say in business so they love to exploit anything.
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I've always been interested in end of the world type of things. Zombie movies, Last Man On Earth books, alien invasion movies, apocalyptic science fiction, etc. and so I've often read this pessimism porn. It's always been around, but in different forms. There was the bird flu scare, the terrorism scare, the nuclear scare, the biological warfare scare, the end of oil scare where they thought people in suburbia would be trapped and have to resort to cannibalism (really, folks, this stuff makes great science fiction). Now the financial doom and gloom people are having their moment in the sun.
Will it come true? Who knows, but no empire lasts forever. And throughout the years, I've learned how to garden, how to survive without a car, how to not need technology (I still don't have a cell phone, but yes, internet access), it hasn't hurt me in any way, if anything, it's taught me how to be reliant and provided me with some great science fiction. What's wrong with that?
Ok, well that's it, we're fine, nothing to see here, move along.....
Isn't that how the Republicans have been campaigning since Bill Clinton became president.
The pessism is rightly placed. Nothing is changing.
- Corporate America getting even MORE abusive.
- Banks aren't lending ANY money to most people or small business no matter how much they're bailed-out.
- There is even MORE globalized outsourcing and H1-B immigration
Ford recently started retooling auto plants, - promising sign on paper. However, most of the automation work went to China and, as always, only already wealthy investors and the Chinese government benefit from this.
What *CHANGE* has been made so far? I hear a lot of lip-service but more and more people are being laid-off, foreclosed on. The ones still working are being worked, sometimes literally, to death or into stress-related mental illness.
I'm an Obama supporter - voted and stumped for him but I'm tired of the tip-toeing and back-peddling while all my friends and family are becomming jobless and/or homeless. WHEN are we going to see change???
Lets NOT let their prediction be our predicament.
When a woman is giving birth - she cannot say, "I can't go through with this." Apparently, giving birth is very painful - but the outcome is something spectacula
When you fear - you lose faith.
I knew all this stuff to be true when I was 14 during the nixon junta. I was absolutely convinced of the impending collapse of civil society. My teenage hyperbole was perhaps premature. Then again, we haven't had a civil society for many years now.
how does this help ? They might have predicted the fire, but why add gas to it ?
Exploiting people's fear is a great way to get your fifteen minutes of fame. These guys are no help to the economic recovery. They offer nothing constructive. Attitude and confidence have as much to do with spending and increasing the financial flow as anything else. And these bums are running around trying to act smarter than the bums who got us into this mess by hyping up the gloom and terror, They are two of a kind. I know this may not be very PC of me but I believe the Obama administration will eventually save our economy. And I say that in the face of all those chic chic doomsdayer predictors.
Yer right, I feel SO ashamed right now......I
I've been operating under the assumption that these guyes peddling the "pessimism" are actually working for the gun and ammo lobbyists whose sales have recently gone through the roof. It's scary beyond belief to consider that they might be correct.
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04/20/09 12:21 AM