Frenzy

With the current happenings transpiring on a daily basis who can you turn to for a concise summation for the state of the worlds financial markets? Well not me! But I wouldn’t be so quick to turn to the media either.

Television. Newspapers. Radio. Every corner of the media is blasting us these days with tales and dire predictions of an economy that is in full recession, possibly about to enter a full recession, is going to weather the recession just fine or what recession? But here’s the real news flash: the media doesn’t care if there is a recession or not (nor does it care if it creates one) the media cares only about selling itself.

Here’s a scenario: Husky Bob is 40 years old and has some disposable income in his pocket. The world seems fine. Then all of a sudden Husky Bob hears a vague “news” story by a supposedly respectable newsmonger that maybe things are just possibly not as good as they seem; Husky Bob feels that maybe Husky Bob should be holding on to his disposable income. Then Husky Bob hears that people aren’t spending as much (Husky Bob doesn’t make the connection that Husky Bob is one of those people) and starts to get worried. Then Husky Bob hears that his stocks are dropping because the earnings from all those companies that Husky Bob bought shares in aren’t doing so well because all the Husky Bob’s out there aren’t buying anything (now to be fair to Husky Bob’s company, it probably did beat analyst’s expectation just not by as much as had been expected – when you figure out how that works, let me know please). All of a sudden Husky Bob is in full panic mode now – the wing flaps are drawn, the fuselage is about to rip off and he’s already sucked all the oxygen out of his tank.

And it all started with that one little story.

These days there isn’t one story out there about how the global economy sucks; there are hundreds if not thousands. In Canada we went from weathering the US financial crisis to, a week later, being prepared by the media to pull up our bootstraps “cause time’s are gonna be rough.” We were insulated from the recession until the media kept hammering at its audience that we were not insulated; fear was mongered. As Dingo would know, I know fear mongering when I see it.

If you want to help the economy, no matter where you are, don’t watch the news, go buy something – here’s an idea: go buy a donut! You get instant gratification from sugary goodness, the donut store gets your money which it passes on to the people who provide the ingredients and its own employees (who go out and spend it), those who provide the goods for the donuts pass that money on to their suppliers and their employees (who go out and spend it) and so on and so forth until the economy is on a roll… or a donut.

It is no longer about telling the story; it’s about selling the paper or the ad slot: the message has been lost to the medium.