From the mouth of Ben Stein -- Grown-up Speak

Say what you will about Ben Stein (and some are not impressed all of the time), I think this guy is one of the few sane, mature voices out there in a sea of panicked children. He has a wisdom and perspective that are sobering at the same time as they are calming. And, he is right. Listening to him is like sitting on the lap of a wise old man -- he is realistic, he knows the lessons of history, and he is calming. Most importantly, he is not trite and he doesn't have his head in the sand. He is particularly refreshing because he speaks in Grown-up Speak -- someone who sees things with clarity and doesn't run around declaring that the sky is falling.

In an excellent piece in the New York Times, entitled It's Time to Take a Deep Breadth, Stein outlines the issues, the stresses, and the realities of the market volatility and corrections underway. He does not run from or white wash the credit disaster and the real estate crash underway, but he brings perspective and calm to his analyses. He is a voice otherwise missing at this time in the markets, in government, and in the media. Let me quote briefly from his article, near the end of his piece and after he says “I get to the point of laughing when I read doom-saying articles in the business sections of newspapers or watch Jim Cramer on CNBC.":

"Yes, there are real problems: housing, mortgage defaults, losses at financial firms, rot in hedge funds. But over all, things will be fine.... This economy is very big and very solid. It cannot be derailed for long by anything we have seen lately.... If I were the editor of the business section for just one day, I would run one immense headline: Everything in Going to Be Fine. Go Back to Work."

Read the whole piece:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/business/09every.html?ref=todayspaper

This man is spot on. I wish there were others -- people who do not panic, people who see the forest through the trees, people who are gown-ups.