I recently stumbled upon a quote from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce President, Tom Donohue, which pretty much sums up my feeling over the word ‘recession.”

Donohue said, “It may be hard to believe, but we really can talk ourselves into an even worse economy.  We have two choices.  We can bemoan our fate and keep telling each other how bad things are.  Or we can get right down to the business of reviving this economy, restoring growth and job creation, and putting Americans back to work.”

Yep, that is the way I see it.  We are being constantly bombarded by doom and gloom reports regarding the economy.  It is enough to stress someone out, and apparently it is.

Several recent family murder-suicides, some of them in Ohio, are being attributed to financial woes and depression.  According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, during the Great Depression, suicides rates rose from 14 per every 100,000 people in 1929 to 17 per every 100,000 in 1933. Over that same period, the unemployment rate increased from 3.2 percent to 24.9 percent.  Those are some scary numbers.  I myself have even found myself frazzled while reading, watching, listening to, even covering stories concerning layoffs, foreclosures, and the Dow dropping yet again.

All of this makes me wish I could go back in time to 1997.  That is the year the Dow dropped as low as it did this past Monday.  I have to be honest, I barely recall October 27, 1997.  I just remember the term ‘Bloody Monday.”  I was working in my first television newsroom and it was part of our newscast, but it meant nothing to me.  I was making $16,000 a year, barely scraping by, and selling shoes at the mall on the weekends.  I couldn’t afford to play the stock market and maybe I was better off.

I longed to make more money and was desperate to move out of my parent’s house in 1997.  But, now I realize I was probably better off.  More than a decade later I make a decent salary and own a house and it stresses me out.  Every time I hear a horror story about someone suffering from the current economy, it cuts me to the core.  And I know I’m not alone.  Apparently ignorance is bliss.

So, from now on I vow to use the power of positive thinking.  I will make every effort to take US Chamber of Commerce President, Tom Donohue’s advice and stop talking myself into suffering from thoughts of an even worse economy.

Heather Miller is a reporter for FOX Toledo.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion, Without A Prompter.
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