I am the water buffalo, you are the alligator

On October 29, 1929 the stock market went right into the toilet. President Hoover, reluctant to call the Wall Street crash a "panic", which is what it was, referred to it as a depression. The label stuck, and today politicians will go to great lengths to avoid using the word depression to describe the current state of the economy. Now the case has been made that the success or failure of our economy is related to people's perception of that economy. If investors feel positively about the future, they spend. If they are uneasy, they don't. Things are only bad if people think that they are bad. Beautifull simplicity in economics. If you can convince people that things are going well, they will go well. And vice versa.