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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Of the few things we control, our thoughts are ours alone. Focus and find 
truth. Let everything in and go nuts. Screen tightly and be uninformed. Go 
sit in a cave and meditate. Or read every piece of mostly bad news each day.

It's a choice.

Found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/05WWLN.html

The Way We Live Now
See a Bubble?

By ROGER LOWENSTEIN
Published: June 5, 2005

It's a good time to be a financial-disaster writer. Disasters abound, and 
even when they don't, people are eager for your opinion on when the next 
bubble is going to pop. Scarcely a day goes by without a warning of some 
dire calamity -- in the dollar, in housing values, in pension funds. The 
way people crave financial info, we must be the best-informed, most 
economically literate society ever. But we do not sleep any better for it. 
Is all the anxiety warranted, or even productive?

A few years ago, the chief claim on the public tranquillity was the fear of 
''deflation,'' meaning that the price of just about everything would fall. 
Before that, it was fear of ''Y2K.'' Neither transpired. This is not to say 
that disaster never strikes. The number of bubbles and consequent meltdowns 
over the last quarter-century could fill a proper B-school syllabus. In 
order of appearance, oil drillers, precious metals, personal computer 
makers, the stock market, commercial real estate, Trump casinos, junk 
bonds, biotechs, Russia and Internet stocks each had their moments of glory 
and returned to earth.

Not every bubble ends with a crash, but sometimes, because of a linkage or 
feedback mechanism, . . . .[more material, but you get the idea].