Markets Up...Who Knew?

May 04, 2009

I know, I know, I have a habit of grinding away on what I see as the apparent genetic paranoia of national and international media who fear being accused of substantially reporting on things which may be interpreted as positive.  Here's my latest presentation of 'evidence' to back my fixation on that point.

We are in a time of serious global economic downturn. We all know that.  Unemployment sadly has increased. Credit is harder to get, even for credit worthy businesses.  We also are aware that these 'downturn' stories and lines are quite understandably repeated minute by minute, nonstop, 24 hours a day, in every medium out there.

Positive indicators however, are never reported in the same intensity or given anywhere near the same placement or visibility.  Case in point, when markets drop, or layoffs occur, that will always understandably be front page or top story status. Understood.  However, if markets should bump upwards, good luck trying to find that reported in a similar way.

I'm willing to bet that most of you, through no fault of your own, have not read or heard that the Dow Index closed this week with net gains in the US markets and that this is the seventh week of gains in the last eight weeks.  Or that the markets in France just finished their 8th straight week of gains.  Or that the NASDAQ (tech stocks) Index just finished the week with its longest string of uninterrupted positive weekly gains since 1999!  Or that the German DAX market finished the week with overall gains of 2 % and even Japan's Nikkei market finished up with gains after two weeks of losses.

I'm not saying the recession is over. I'm not saying that markets won't drop next week. I'm not even saying things won't get worse.  I am saying that I had to sift through a lot of back pages of news papers and do a lot of internet scanning of TV news to find those stories.  It makes me wonder what secret code of conduct binds media to the practice of supersizing the negative and minimizing the positive.

Why even worry about it? C'est la vie, you say. Well the problem is that our thoughts and actions are often affected (infected?) by the intensity of what we hear.  On the economic scene for instance, people make decisions on how they 'feel' things are going. If there was not a shred of anything positive to report, then people will respond in a certain way.

But if there are positive items out there and we are not informed, then we will make daily decisions, large or small, that serve to support the reporters' perception instead of the reality.

Speaking about perceptions, here's a local one I'm dealing with. I've had it reported to me that some local supporters of the provincial (not federal) BC Conservatives are saying I'm supporting that party and its local candidates in the upcoming provincial election.

Read my lips. Wrong. Not. Nada. Nyet. Nein. Non. Oh, and did I mention, no?

This is not personal. I respect all candidates who run for office and all parties for adding to the democratic debate and mosaic. As a matter of fact I have developed strong friendships and great respect and work well with many NDP and Liberal MP's. 

But I also have been clear at every joint federal/provincial news conference in BC over the last few years, and in this paper that I support the non-partisan federal/provincial approach of the Premier and his local candidates, as well as retiring MLA, Rick Thorpe.

Do I support them because they are the perfect politicians from the perfect party that upholds every single thing I believe in?  Obviously not.  We make our disagreements known.  As a matter of fact, if you ever find the perfect party, don't join it, you'll make it imperfect.

I've also always said that I believe that socialist policies are not in the best interests of hard working people.  No system is perfect, each is flawed. But Winston Churchill said it well when he observed that systems based on capital and free markets are able to spread the benefits around to more people, but unequally. Whereas systems based on socialism spread the misery equally.

To maintain a system of more, rather than less benefits (meaning jobs), I want to make sure my vote does not split the pro-prosperity system and allow the socialist system to win by default.

And talking about winning, I had the thrill of hanging out last Friday evening with all of our Olympic athletes.  We listened to Canadian ultra-runner Ray Ahab, talk about his run across 7,500 kilometers of the Sahara Desert!  You can see and hear about it yourself next month when the real life movie, produced by Matt Damon, is released in Canada. 

Just when I was thinking I had done something superhuman by running the Boston Marathon two weeks ago, I listen to Ray Ahab who ran the equivalent of two marathons PER DAY, to cross the scorching Sahara desert in 111 days.

And just to show his true Canadian colours, he also became the first person to run across Antarctica to the South Pole.