PrintOctober 21, 2011
Cheer-up, America! The Case for American Optimism
Look for moments of maximum pessimism. To the legendary value investor Sir John Templeton, this was the secret to learning how to buy low and sell high.
In recent months, I've been feeling the pessimism in a big way. You probably have too. Watching the scroll of headlines on cable news channels this summer, I thought I was in an overdone disaster film. Riots break out across the globe, screamed a Drudge headline. Markets were crashing. An earthquake cracked the Washington Monument. In my hands, Mark Steyn's new book After America -- a rollicking read that makes a strong case that we should prepare for the apocalypse -- arrived perfectly timed with the S&P's downgrade of the United States' credit rating. The end, surely, seems nigh.
President Obama blames this -- the credit downgrade, the Carteresque malaise, virtually all the wreckage around us -- on our politics "being broken." Lots of...(Read Full Article)
