It’s a New Year, which typically brings with it a fresh, gauzy optimism and hope that things will be different, better. New.
But conflict-and-drama-driven media narratives tend to paint a different picture. In a thought-provoking and counterintuitive piece, Motley Fool One Senior Analyst Morgan Housel recounts a conversation he recently had with author and equities analyst Barry Ritholtz, CIO of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The two agree that despite a spate of seemingly bad news in business, government and healthcare, there is actually tremendous cause for optimism.
“There’s a knee-jerk reaction to think tomorrow will look just like yesterday,” Housel writes. “After the worst recession in 80 years, people (mainly journalists) are still conditioned to see danger everywhere they look. But a lot of things are heading in the right direction. I think 2013 was a breakthrough year for the economy.”
To buttress his argument, Housel points to advances in solving America’s debt burdens, which he frames as being their “lowest in a generation.” He notes plunging “healthcare cost growth,” a positive trend overshadowed by the botched implementation of Obamacare. And he points to a declining federal budget deficit that’s slowly being consumed by a 4-percent GDP per-year growth rate.
Housel concludes by quoting analyst Cullen Roche, who said: “I am a big believer that there are more people waking up in the morning saying ‘I want to be smarter and better than I was yesterday’ than there are waking up saying ‘the world is doomed, I should build a bunker and hide out.’”
What do you think? Is Housel being a rosy-eyed Pollyanna? Will this New Year be the same as last year? Or, as Housel and Ritholtz have it, will the New Year bring new cause for realistic optimism?
Despite whatever challenges 2014 may bring, could we make it our best year ever? As I consider Housel’s and Ritholtz’s optimistic take on what 2014 will bring, I’m reminded of an old Henry Ford axiom: “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”
