Economic Stimulus Lake Highlands Style

I have spent the past few weeks glued to the TV, internet and newspaper watching the economic "crisis" unfold. Never in my lifetime did I think I would see such a situation and I can not feel worse for the folks who have lost their jobs, their houses, their lives!

But as I dig deeper into the data I am mesmerized by the fact that 8% of our neighbors have become unemployed. That's 8%, about 3% more than were jobless a year ago. Now, we have to mention that most have lost about 50% of our "wealth" in the stock market but in my world that's only "paper money" - you know....those numbers that show up on my stock report each month. But the dollars in my bank haven't changed much. And, like 92% of you I still am fortunate to have my job. So what is creating such havoc? Fear!

I read today that Sr. Executive Chief of the Money World Summers (or something) stated that our economy was better than we all thought and that we were all suffering from a bad case of the frights! I have to admit, over the past few weeks I've cut back on my spending due to fear over the future. Have you?

So what are we to do? If we still have jobs. If our paycheck has remained more or less un scathed...what should we do? Here is my guess - stop being fearful. I wouldn't say, "go back to the days of spending $10 for each $1 you earn" but I would say, stop being scared. If each person with a job, without a pay cut, would go out and spend $100 on something that they would not normally buy (not groceries, gas, etc.) maybe, just maybe, those folks that are wrighting all the articles and clogging all the news casts would back off just a little. And maybe we could start to recover from this economy of fear. Maybe.