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Economy

The Economy: Public Still Scared To Death

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. At least that is what Abraham Lincoln  believed and it seems to be proven in a new Washington Post/ABC poll. The survey shows that“Despite fresh signs that the worst may be over for the beleaguered U.S. economy, there has been no let-up in public fears about possible financial hardship ahead and there is broad concern that not enough is being done to avert another meltdown.”

In other words, the average citizen is not buying into expert statements that things are better.

The most import information from the survey of 1,007 conducted between September 10 and September 12 is that 60% of the people polled are worried about job or pay losses. That number is almost unchanged since the poll was done in February, at the depth of the recession.

The result of the survey may surprise experts who believe that the economy is expanding again and that 2010 should be a year of renew prosperity. People who are out of work,  and have friend and family and neighbors out of work are having trouble seeing what economists claim that the see.

The data points to a deep-rooted concern among people who have to become consumers again for the economy to have a sustained recovery that spending money is risky. The money is dry powder for what may be a prolonged period of relative poverty among the lower and middle classes.

That Washington Post/ABC survey shows that the groundhog sees his shadow and has gone back to a long period of hibernation.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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