Alarmist Reporting

While experiencing our current economic downturn, a rising tide of alarmist reporting has been unleashed upon our society. While I have written several articles describing a potentially dreary and disastrous outcome if our society and government did not act rationally and quickly to avert an even greater crisis, I have intentionally not written about the “end game” or any event involving the “crash” of our society. Several pundits have started tossing around these terms and there is a growing sentiment of fear and anxiety rooted around this “all is lost” philosophy.

Several pundits and reporters have been giving advice that only advocates fear and will contribute towards an economic downward spiral. Along with this alarmist type reporting, we are also seeing several conspiracy theory ideas sprout up. The psyche of our nation (and world) is primed and susceptible to “game changing” arguments. By that I mean people have been pushed so close to the edge that rather than reacting with a rational response, they are reacting irrationally because they are making decisions based upon speculation and fear of the unknown.

A game changing action is exactly what our governments are trying to accomplish as we are going through these hard times. All of the major economies of the world are continually trying to reestablish confidence in the global financial markets by acting as one. They have all reduced interest rates to try and restart lending. Most governments are providing and injecting vast quantities of money into their financial industries trying to rebuild the consumer confidence in the market. Nations are spending BILLIONS trying to make a game changing event. Their goal is to remove fear from the market and replace it with the confidence we have lost.

But, with alarmist reporting and conspiracy theories running wild, these events are being undermined because of the fearful and currently irrational reactions being made by our citizens of the world. If the average citizen continues to pull money from the banking institutions, sells off their stock purchases and dumps the money into money market accounts and even cash, and even begins to purchase gold and silver and other “real” investments, our economy will pay the price. There of course needs to be a reaction to our situation, nobody will allow their investments to simply go away with blind faith in the market, but an overreaction is just as bad.

Reporting that the end is near or that we are heading for governmental collapse or telling people to horde cash, food, water, etc is alarmist reporting which preys upon the citizens fearful of the situation. While we do need to be prepared at all times for major issues which could face us in our world, we should not overreact to situations without proper knowledge.

Have you ever been in an office where one person walked in grumpy, upset, or just generally angry? How did your office’s atmosphere turn out that day? It’s pretty likely that the office’s demeanor was not happy. The appearance of a single bad mood can affect an entire office’s mood… I’ve been there, I’m sure you’ve been there. Simple example, but what we are seeing here is on a much larger scale. Alarmist reporting is the bad mood entering the office. The bad mood is infecting the collective rationale of our country and rather than going away the next day, it’s perpetuating itself into everything we do, including our decision making.

If there is concrete information supporting the claims of the alarmist reporters, then yes, we need to know it. However, if it is just opinion, then it must be tempered accordingly and we should treat it as just a potential outcome and not THE outcome. We have become a nation and world of reactionary individuals waiting with bated breath as to what next “disaster” we will be subjected to. This state of living provides the alarmist reporters a fertile ground of minds to affect and thus, can effectively create significant outcomes based upon their statements.