A Little PR Needed

It's a given that consumers drive our economy. And we constantly hear that consumer confidence is way down and going lower. Apparently Holiday shopping this year was down by varying estimates, but I heard one the other night on a national news program saying it was down by 2-plus percent. So that means if a store made $100 last year this year it made around $98. Somehow this does not strike me as a major catastrophe. Both electronic and print media are repeatedly telling us that the worst is yet to come for the economy and that unemployment will rise by millions of jobs in 2009. Is it any wonder consumers are holding back on spending? Now I'm not asking those in the media to outright lie to us and tell us that our homes will be worth at least 3 times what they are now by midsummer or that there will be such a demand for any type of skill in the job market that we'll all be making at least 6 figures within weeks but maybe a little more positive depiction of things overall might help even if a little bit. If everyone felt a little better about the upcoming year then maybe they'd spend that little extra to get something that they wanted or needed, and then the snowball effect begins in the positive just like we've seen in 2008 going the other direction. Let's get away from the "gloom and doom" news every night and maybe things just might start to look a little brighter! Happy 2009 everyone!