Reasons to be cheerful

Even if you don't own stocks directly, you may have been watching your 401(k) go haywire since approximately February. If you financed your home with a "liar loan" that has reset lately, you might not have been cheery--this whole mortgage meltdown/turmoil in real estate thing. But today I read the following encouraging comment:

Phil Dow, director of equity strategy with RBC Dain Rauscher, also thinks that the economy is in reasonably decent shape.

"There is a disconnect. The economic reality isn't as bad as some are indicating," Dow said. A mentor of mine told me that real risk is at its highest when perceived risk is low. But right now, people are afraid of their own shadow."

(God it must be annoying to work on Wall St. and have "Dow" as a surname, although I guess having a last name such as "Standard" or "Poor" wouldn't be any walk in the park either.)

Anyway, there you have it, a pre-Thanksgiving contraindicator. If more Americans had been scared shitless when they took out all those ARM loans for homes they couldn't afford, we might not have got into this mess in the first place.

For more information about mentors, click here. For additional reasons to be cheerful, here is the full list.