The quote about people being used to a good economic numbers is close to the point: too many people don’t have a historical perspective. Besides many people being too young to remember or too ignorant to pay attention, a big part of the problem is that news media does not report things in a historical perspective but goes after doom and gloom emotional reporting in order to attract attention to itself.

As we saw in the chart above, returns from the stock market are cyclical. Good times follow bad times. Now, I cannot tell you that this plunge in consumer sentiment unquestionably presages a turning point for investments. ……