A thought occurred to me a few days ago. Our media seems to have a tremendous influence over the vast majority of the American public. Often times, the mere absence of our media would cause many cases of widespread panic to ripple by virtually unnoticed! 
Let us take for example, the Y2K bug. AAAHHHH!!! Look at the chaos that followed that tragedy. We had major bank software crash, Wall Street collapsed, rioting and looting were the order of the day, and life on our planet ceased to exist...right?
WRONG!! Absolutely nothing happened. I have a friend who bought a huge water bladder to store drinking water when the utility companies crashed, she bought a huge generator and large quantities of gasoline for when Edison crashed, she bought tons of food for when the agricultural system crashed. The only problem was that none of them DID crash.
Now, before I get shot for being somewhat critical of our media, stop and consider for a moment what would have happened had the media kept from obsessing about it. The people who prevented a huge problem still would have had the same amount of time to correct it, members of the public would not have gone out in droves to purchase things like bladders and MREs, and the majority of the American public would have gone about the last several months of 1999 without worrying that life was going to end.
Am I saying that we should be kept in the dark? No. However, with the media obsessing over something for 
months and months, those of us who are easily swayed by the glossy faces that spew information on the 5 o'clock news are more than likely going to panic.
Now lets look at this whole housing market "crisis" that arose a few weeks ago. Can you imagine how different the housing market would be today had the media not jumped on top of the mountain and proclaimed the Armageddon of real estate? Sure, Countrywide is having issues. Yeah, they kinda put themselves in some hot water. Does that mean that the housing market needs to come to a crashing halt? The media thinks so.
The housing market is very dependant on people buying and selling houses. Obviously. It seems to me that all we need these days is to have some member of the media mention that something bad is coming, and the whole country puts itself into the crash position. Ah the power of suggestion!
So what does that do? It makes the situation WORSE. Sometimes, I wish I were in the position to tell the media to SHUT UP already!
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