20-Aug-10 News -- Bad economic news stuns investors

[John]

20-Aug-10 News -- Bad economic news stuns investors

** 20-Aug-10 News -- Bad economic news stuns investors
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 20#e100820


Contents:
"Investors 'stunned' by bad economic news on Thursday"
"Additional links"
Arab states cut financial aid to Palestinians
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko may be going away
State Dept. says that direct Israeli-Palestinian talks are near

[The Grey Badger]

I just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreich's "Bright-Sided", about the perils of Positive Thinking. Among her other points, she shows that in the latter days of the bubble, anyone who brought any realism or caution to the table was not only dismissed as "spreading negativity", but could be - often was - fired for it.

Her book also showed me two things that had been puzzling me personally: why in modern Wiccan circles, at least locally, you often hear such phrases as "banish all negativity" -- this is what they mean -- and why it always made the back of my brain itch to hear it, as if there was something essentially wrong with that formulation.

[Full disclosure - I AM a witch. The sort spelled with a W, not the sort spelled with a B, though some of you may disagree on the latter. And any witch who does not recognize the dark side of things - the necessary downswing of the birth-and-death cycle - is a dangerous idiot.]