Freak-out chic

So is frugal still the new sexy?  Is thrifty still cool? I don’t feel like I’m seeing variations on that trend story so much lately. Now I feel like what I’m reading more often is that maybe consumer behavior is being shaped less by  “new values” than by, oh, I don’t know, panic and fear.

Check out some comments from today’s WSJ wrapup of stock market sentiment:

Gone are the days where the mantra among investors was to “buy the dips,” on the belief that when stock prices fall, they’re likely to rebound. Instead, the opposite sentiment has taken hold.

“It’s like an unending nightmare,” says Kent Engelke, managing director at Capital Securities Management in Glen Allen, Va.

Astonishingly, the piece says: “Many analysts and investors are still worried that earnings estimates are too high.” In other words there is still too much optimism out there. Can that be? I guess it’s possible. From everything I see in the papers, online, on television, expectations are extremely bad. The primary position of most economics experts seems to be finding inventive new ways to say: “That plan won’t work.”

And at the grassroots level? Well, the WSJ story includes an anecdote from an investment adviser who turned bearish in 2007 and started telling  his clients to get back into the market late last year: “Their response, he says, has been to send him hate mail.”

Despite all this, the WSJ says “The market has yet to show signs of reaching a bottom,” because “there has been no panic selling in large volume.” So that’s the other problem to go along with too much optimism — not enough panic.

As I go about my day-to-day life, I don’t feel like everybody I come into contact with is freaking out. But maybe that’s because I’m in Savannah, and the vibe in New York and/or Washington is different. But I must say the level of gloom and panic and freaking-out in the press (both mainstream and “citizen” varieties) is something I’ve never seen before. Possibly it’s just a feedback loop, everybody trying to paint a dimmer picture than everyone else, finding new ways to predict maximum collapse. I’m very much a news junkie sort, and this is the first time I can ever remember wanting to avoid reading another take on the “big story” of the moment — the big story of the moment being economic calamity.

If it’s somehow true that there’s not enough panic out there, it’s not for lacking of trying on the part of the contemporary info-ecosystem.

It’s giving me panic fatigue.

Artwork by Shawn Wolfe & used without permission, but with the hope that he’ll be forgiving.