[rnemo]

It's always reasonable to be cautious, even wary. Doubly so these days. Throwing caution to the wind is what got the US economy into this mess. Never stop being cautious when dealing with any sort of market.

That said ever since the end of 2008 you can find a Forbes or WSJ opinion piece not less than once a month about how within the next six months the entire planet is going to fall straight to bits and theres nothing you can really do about it, but heres a few things to do to make you feel better. And those things always happen to conveniently be things that make the problem even worse, basically putting your money into a mattress. Another common theme is that the fact the government is spending a dime at all on anything is whats causing the problem, despite the fact that the US governments deficit problems only play a small part in the overall economy (consumer confidence, lack of hiring, and etc are all more important woes).

This particular article is bad enough that I really wish I could downvote it. It's a scare article marketed as journalism and I think it's pretty insulting.

[TomOfTTB]

I'm sorry but you're wrong on just about everything here.

1. While I don't know the articles you speak of you can't blame commentators for being off on predictions if the Government is doing everything it can to goose the economy. You say the national debt is a small amount of total debt and that's true. But the governments of the world have also been taking other steps like printing money and artificially keeping interest rates down (at 0 in fact). These are things that could help the economy recover but they are also things that would put off a crisis if it was coming.

2. No one would suggest putting money in your mattress because money loses value. Take a look at the dollar index: http://bit.ly/qO0F7X So the dollar has lost about 35% of its value since 2001

[rnemo]

1. I can and will continue to blame the commentators and the respected publications in the financial world who give them voice for consistently publishing pieces that not only turn out to be wrong but aren't doing anything to help the problem. I really don't care what the government is or isn't doing, it's at best irresponsible to keep on publishing articles that doomsay to no result when investor confidence, employer confidence, and consumer confidence are such important parts of economic recovery.

2. I was using metaphor when talking about stuffing money into mattresses, the point being that most of the time the recommended actions for saving the individuals money do nothing good for the overall economy, instead the actions just provide a potential safety blanket. In terms of talking about economic ups and downs and how to prevent them, these actions have not much more effect than shoving money into a mattress