Just like Real Estate has Location, Location, Location, the US economy has the same: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.  The way out of this great recession is JOBS.

1. Jobs - Creating Jobs get people back to work, who will then be able to spend money on goods and services. Over 2/3 of the US economy is consumer spending driven. 

2. Jobs - Means a lower unemployment rate which builds confidence and gets people who are already employed spending money.

3. Jobs - Lower the business losses since employed people can pay their bills; power, water, rent, mortgage, food, credit cards.

If business could look at the bigger picture they would see that hiring is a great thing for the economy as well as themselves. 

Did the Media cause the Great Recession?  Probably Not.  Did they make it worse? Absolutely!  So I know most of you are wondering, how could the Media possibility have made the Great Recession worse?

To answer that, we need a little background.  The US economy is driving by consumers, in fact over 2/3 of the economy. Next, the Media loves to report "bad" news.  And face it, bad news is good news for the Media.  That's how they make their money. We humans are wired to respond more to the bad then the good.  Human nature as they say.

So how did these facts make the economy worse?

In their book, "Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive", Goldstein, Martin, and Cialdini used their research to show how making some small changes to the way information is presented can persuade someone to do something.  It also shows that you can have the opposite effect on people.  Let me explain by using an example.  There are some great ones in their book, but let's just make one up.

Say the Parks service has done a study to see how many people litter.  It shows that ten percent (10%) litter and ninety percent (90%) don't.  Great, but that's still a lot of trash that needs to be cleaned up and with tighter budgets these day they could save a lot if that rate went down. So the park service decides to put up some signs "Only 10% of our visitors litter; please help keep the Park clean".  That seems like a good sign and should help eliminate some of the litter.

What did the research find?  The research shows that the number of people who actually litters goes up! What?!? It appears the visitors think "Hey other people do it, why shouldn't I".  Reversing the data, sending a positive message, "90% of our visitors help keep the Park clean, won't you please help?” will cause the number of litters to go down.

Let's apply this to our economy.  The media loves to report the unemployment numbers, "The unemployment rate is over 8%, 10% (or whatever it happens to be) now."  So employers think to themselves, "Hey everyone is laying people off, I should too!".  A vicious downward cycle. How do we fix it?  Report Employment numbers, "90% of people are employed!". Another vicious cycle, UPWARD!

Self fulfilling prophecy.

As the Media reports all the Doom and Gloom, people begin believing the hype and believe it is worse that it really is.  Which makes us pull back our spending, which makes the economy worse, which gives the Media more "Doom and Gloom", which makes us pull back more, ... Again, another vicious downward cycle.

So how do we stop it?  Easily it theory, hard in practice. 

1. Stop listening to the Media hype

2. The Media needs to change the way it reports news.

 Like I said the solution is easy, the fix is hard.