We continue to wade through an economic outlook that feels like trying to run through hip deep molasses and with little if any encouragement finding its way to the surface it makes neither going to sleep very easy nor waking up with a smile much of a probability.
Even as this is written, out comes the Conference Board's consumer confidence index for October at 38.0 - the lowest ever. Cool. It's always nice to be part of a record breaking performance.
So where is there some perspective? Read on:
A couple of Sunday's ago I think I found at least some in the form of the Your Money column in the NY Times. It is written each week by a guy named Ron Leiber.
In this particular piece he did what I thought was an especially good job of helping readers to look at this mess in a somewhat different, and I felt, very intelligent and positive way.
In short, the article is about a family in Ann Arbor, Michigan who have two kids (both of whom are just a couple of years away from heading off to college) and who in the middle of a "sky is falling" environment went out and dropped 55 large on a boat.
If you decide to read the article in full you might be inclined to say well hell, they could afford it! Maybe yes and maybe no which is really the point to start with.
These are super uncertain times whether you are working or not, and just because you are doesn't mean you will be at the end of next week.
They bought the boat anyway.
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