Sharing the gloom
By John Burke | Related entries in NewsNew York Times media columnist David Carr speculates today on the extent to which the now all-pervasive, instantaneous, 24/7 electronic media environment might be spreading and heightening the fear and gloom about the economy:
Every modern recession includes a media séance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in. The same digital dynamics that drove the irrational exuberance — and marketed the loans to help it happen — are now driving the downside in unprecedented ways…
With unemployment, auto sales, home foreclosures and consumer confidence all benchmarking historic levels of distress, news outlets are hardly making it up. But the machinery of the economy began to freeze in place far more quickly than it has in the past, in part because so much scary data is circulating so much faster than it used to. This recession got deeper faster because we knew more bad stuff quickly.
“Our collective hive-mind gets into a tizzy over other things that suddenly zoom into focus,†said Xeni Jardin, one of the editors of the blog Boing Boing. “It’s a hurricane! OMG, salmonella in the hamburgers! Wait, we’re all fat! There is an escalation of attention that feeds itself, because this recession is appearing throughout all forms of digital human expression. And unlike any of those other topics, this affects everyone.â€
Carr may have a point. No question there’s a tough recession out there, but the universal anxiety seems much worse than in the serious 1970s and 1980s recessions, when people had only their own experiences and a handful of old media to make them nervous.
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December 8th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
What does Carr miss in this analysis? IMO, the reason for the speed of the onset and spread of the problems isn’t because of the 24/7 news cycle. it’s because the spread of business intelligence among businesses of every kind is just as fast. That is a major change since the last general recession that came close to being this bad. This caused the credit crunch to come about with a mind-numbing speed and much of what happened afterward flows from that. In addition large numbers of people have been uneasy for a long time as they watched their income stagnate, the cost of their health care stagnate and their chances of secure employment evaporate. Then along comes the bad news of a nasty recession. It looks like every one of those factors is suddenly going to be magnified and fast. So of course the consumer’s horns are pulled in fast. It’s called fear. YMMV.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
So the point here is that ignorance IS bliss and we’re better off not knowing our current economic situation so we can continue our credit card bliss and indulge in all we deem necessary to exist in the modern world whether we can pay for it or not?
Maybe we’re exaggerating things a bit but maybe the WaPo article that I just read informing us that the unemployment numbers are actually quite under reported to the point of fraud! They based this opinion on the fact that the jobless rate is based on current benefits claims even though there are many more unemployed not looking for jobs, not collecting, or working part time b/c full time is unavailable. OOPS !! Did I just prove your point – too much information?
Well, I just don’t buy it, sorry about the pun. People have been over extended on their credit lines for some time now. It’s what’s been driving our economy – that and speculative frenzy chasing the next great cash cow down the street. Our lending institutions make it all too easy with credit cards for teenagers and great big mortgages for low wage earners with no savings. So now it’s over – as it should be – and it’s painful – as withdrawal often is. But don’t smooth it over with bailouts and pile on more debt to solve the problem of having too much debt!
The news is bad, so deal with it. Change the way you do business or go belly-up like the dinosaurs did. We’re warm blooded, we can adapt.