The Bright Side-Wisdom from 2008
Ten years ago we headed into a major and difficult financial downturn in this country. It was another of those "unprecedented " times. I remember it well, but suspect it's now in the rear view window of many as the stock market and the economy have recovered.
I wrote this article and posted it on my blog at ffptalk.com in 2013. In 2008 I was a financial advisor and broker who was looking for the good in all that had happened. It came to me in form of a big yellow magazine cover titled The Bright Side By Fareed Zakaria.
The introduction to my article is below and you can read the entire document by clicking on the link.
The Bright Side-Wisdom from 2008
Yes, this financial management posting is written on a sunshine yellow background. The color selection is intentional. It is inspired by a magazine cover from 2008, a time when our financial systems in the U.S.experienced a major downturn. The cover was a bright spot during a very uncertain time. I re-discovered the magazine when unpacking some boxes from storage a few days ago (summer 2013). Looking at the magazine and hearing my husband casually mention that the Dow had hit 15,000 led me to reflect back on 2008. I started to connect the country’s reaction (and media attention) to how things stood then--- and where we are now. As a reminder, the Dow is the short form of the Dow Jones Industrial Average which is an index consisting of 30 companies. This index seems to have become the media favorite for tracking the ups and downs in our economy. It was interesting to me that all the past hype with 24x7 minute-by-minute reporting of the Dow which we experienced in 2008, is not now being repeated since the trend became positive. Where was the super-bowl like coverage celebrating the Dow hitting 15,000? How many people gathered in stadiums to celebrate? Who would be picked to perform for the half-time show? Wasn’t this significant improvement from where we had been over the last five years just as newsworthy as the crisis? Did people start studying details about the companies in the DOW just as they track news of their favorite sports teams, media stars, or musicians? Have the media and the public forgotten where we had been and how dramatic it was at the moment?