Skip to footer

Are Obama's state-of-the-union ideas the antidote to economic fears?

As President Obama travels after his State of the Union speech to rally support for his proposals, he must also deal with a rising mood of pessimism about the economy. Fear of the future must not be allowed to feed on itself.

|
AP Photo
Traders watch video screens last week on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, which has seen rising numbers.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

Barack Obama is using his fifth State of the Union message to kick off a presidential road tour. He will try to rally popular support for his ideas on job creation. But Mr. Obama may want to also address something other than his ideas.

Many Americans are still extremely concerned about their economic future despite an official end to the Great Recession three years ago. The mood is more cope than hope.

Here is one revealing statistic: About 1 in 4 adults has recently sought professional help for stress or depression. And other polls reveal an urgent need for the president to stem a contagion of fear.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they will never financially recover. More than half think the economy is still in recession – despite steady if slow growth – and that a full recovery will take at least six years. Only 1 in 5 says the next generation will have better job and career opportunities.

Housing and stock markets may be up – a function mainly of credit-easing by the Federal Reserve – but consumer optimism is going down. Last month, the Conference Board index of consumer confidence fell for the third month in a row. And a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in January found 60 percent of people say the coming year is “a time to hold back and save, because harder times are ahead.” A global poll finds a similar pessimism.

Creating optimism about the American economy has been a long ordeal. The main antidote to economic fear about the state of the economy is to raise the levels of trust among people – trust that new ideas will produce goods and services that people want, that markets will operate transparently, and that government debt won’t be a drag on the economy by competing for credit.

Trust is a solid lubricant for commerce while fear in an economy is, well, often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Obama walks a fine line between sympathizing with this mood and trying to encourage Americans. His proposals for growth, such as subsidies for clean energy, are meant to raise hope in new industries and restore confidence. But as he said in his second inaugural, prosperity “rests on the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.” His first task may be to make sure those shoulders are not slumping. Only then can America see a rising middle class.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Are Obama's state-of-the-union ideas the antidote to economic fears?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0212/Are-Obama-s-state-of-the-union-ideas-the-antidote-to-economic-fears
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe