Hope

"Once you choose hope, anything's possible."


- Christopher Reeve


The news lately has not been hopeful. I believe the media is making it worse with exaggerated predictions of a gloomy outlook. The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) recently announced that Germany has experienced 2 quarters of detraction in GDP, therefore, is officially in recession. The retraction, however, was very slight: GDP fell 0.5 percent in the third quarter after a 0.4 percent decline in the second quarter. The OECD has also predicted that gross domestic product for its 30 member countries would decline 0.3 percent in 2009 from 2008, before recovering slightly to grow by 1.5 percent in 2010.

Notice how a 1.5 % growth is considered slight and no adjective is used to describe the 0.3 % decline. The media has focused on the decline - calling it grim. By proliferating the view that this is a negative outlook, the media is in fact creating a self fulfilling prophesy. It could even make the downturn worse than it portrays.

The global economy has been overheated for the past 3 -5 years, maybe longer. The stock markets and real estate have been over valued and over bought. The financial institutions have been reckless. It is sad to me that greed won out over financial prudence. Considering this, a decline of only 0.3% is extremely good news. I see a slow down as a relief and quite possibly an opportunity. I have hope that more people will think of the slow down in this way and that as a result the world will come out of this period stronger and more prudent.

If you look at the historical graphs of the Dow on Yahoo here, you may see what I see. Recently, there have been two periods of extraordinary growth. Each time, the markets fell back to the place it would have been had economic growth been kept at a sustainable rate. So in the end, sustainable growth won out over excess. This is positive news - sustainable growth is good for everyone. An overheated economy burns people out, does not use resources efficiently and in general does not reward ethical behaviour. It follows the parable of the Tortoise and the Hare. I believe that if people were to view the OECD's announcement as positive, rather than as the media portrays it, it is possible that the downturn will be short lived. I have a lot of hope that I am not the only one who is thinking this way. As Christopher Reeve said: "Anything's possible"


Today, I am also thinking about a group of families who are waiting, as patiently as possible, to hear whether they have to wait a few days or several weeks for their second chance to finalize the adoption of their children. Their advocate is meeting with the powers that be in the next 24 hours to plead their case. By this time tomorrow they will know. In the mean time, I have them in my thoughts, with hope and faith that they receive happy news tomorrow.

I have hope for Bright Star Dreams