Positive Thinking?

This week, President Obama offers a “glimmer of hope” to the nation about the economy. Even though he is completely aware that there is still much work to be done and the economy is still under great amounts of stress, there has been some improvement. He also claims that we are seeing progress and “if we stick with it…we will get the economy back on track.”

Is this statement true? Statistics show that the number of American’s collecting unemployment went up this week from 5.75 million to 5.84 million. That seems to me to contradict what Obama recently said about the economy. Right?

Obama when asked about the current economy over the last several months would often respond that it will get much worse before it is going to get any better. He now seems to be trying to be more optimistic. Is he just trying to convince the nation by highlighting the positive instead of the negative?

I wonder how the 8.5 percent of Americans that do not have jobs at this point feel about his statement? I am sure they do not agree with the concept that there is a “glimmer of hope” for our economy. For the people that might be merely surviving on one income or the small amount of money drawn from unemployment, the Presidents statement does not convince them that there is, in fact, hope in the weeks ahead.

I’m not sure that merely stating that the economy is getting better will actually make it get better or convince American. To those who are not hurting from the recession, the economy already seems hopeful because they are not suffering from its effects. Maybe after three months of being president, he is just simply tired of only having bad things to report to Americans.