You thought 2009 was bad?
Well, in the aftermath of the mess left behind by the previous administration, it was.
And, as we end 2009, unemployment is still unacceptably high.
USA Today writes in an editorial today, “2009 will not go down as a great year. Come to think of it, the whole decade has been rather wretched.”
The editorial, for example, cites:
The 2000s included, in chronological order, a disputed presidential election, a tech bust, a terror attack, an anthrax attack, a war premised on faulty intelligence, a terrible hurricane, a college massacre, a housing debacle, a financial panic and the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of mankind.
As if all that weren’t enough, the decade featured a proliferation of TV and radio ranters and Internet bloggers in a kind of amplified re-emergence of a crowd Vice President Spiro Agnew once dubbed the “nattering nabobs of negativism.” To these naysayers, bad isn’t good enough. We should be mortified. Despondent.
Depending on which political wing they are coming from, the president is either socializing health care or selling out liberalism. The banking system is on the brink of collapse.
But wait; there is good news and “cause for cheering this holiday season.”
Among the good news, USA Today lists, for starters, “this miserable annum is almost over,” and continues:
* The economy is improving. “…last month, the unemployment rate dropped from 10.2% to 10%. The economy grew by 2.2% in the third quarter. The Dow Jones average is up 60% from its bottom in March. Even the pessimistic projections for next year have businesses creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. More optimistic ones say that job growth will be robust because, after years of downsizing and productivity gains, companies will be forced to hire as their business picks up.”
* Banks are repaying bailout money. “A number of major banks have either paid back their money from the 2008 bailout, or have announced plans to do so. These are the same institutions that were written off early this year as ‘zombie banks’ that would have to be nationalized…”
* Crime is down. “Despite the recession, crime rates kept dropping during the first half of 2009. Murder and manslaughter were down 10%. Property crimes dropped 6.1%. Violent crime dropped 4.4%. Rates haven’t been this low since the early 1960s…”
* The swine flu hasn’t been so bad.
USA Today cautions:
Despite these hopeful trends, there’s no guarantee the 2010s will be better than 2000s. Terrorists and rogue states are still trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. is drowning in debt, and the nation’s political system seems incapable of addressing intractable long-term problems.
But, as the new decade begins, the world keeps spinning on its axis from darkness toward morning. There will be new inventions, new heroes and new works of art. There is every reason to believe, as author William Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech six decades ago, that mankind ‘will not merely endure: he will prevail.’
I join USA Today in their optimism and in their Merry Christmas wish
