Thomas Oliver: Do you believe in miracles?

By Thomas Oliver

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

You want to believe that things are getting better.

That the partial restoration of your 401 (k) was based on reality and not just another bubble. You aren’t sure you can handle another bubble bursting, but you’ve been suspicious for some time that the market’s rise wasn’t sustainable.

And while you welcome the good news of the third quarter GDP, you know that it was fostered in large measure by stimulus checks and cash for clunkers. Both were one-time attempts to stop the bleeding.

You want to believe that housing prices have found their bottom.

You want to believe that extending and even expanding the homebuyer’s tax credit will help. Your less than enthusiastic support for the credit was born more of fear than philosophy, which seems to be happening more often lately.

But you also know the credit has gone mostly to folks who were going to buy anyway at some point. Like cash for clunkers.

It shows, once again, that money motivates. That tax incentives work. For good or bad.

Still, the nagging concern you have about housing isn’t some dubious tax credit but rather the continuing rise in unemployment.

Unemployment used to be someone else’s problem.

In Michigan.

Or some other state north of the Mason-Dixon line.

But now you know out-of-work folks. Friends. Neighbors.

These are people who have always worked. And always paid their mortgage.

The one thing in common they seem to have is the bewildered look of someone who can’t comprehend why they are unable to find work.

You know Atlanta’s 10.5 percent unemployment rate, as bad as it is, isn’t the true reflection of pain and suffering out there. When you add discouraged and part- timers wanting full-time work, Atlanta’s real unemployment rate has likely edged north of 18 percent.

You hear the experts preparing us for a jobless recovery, one in which business returns to profitability by cutting costs and getting more production out of fewer employees. You can’t quite get your head around how that equates to a recovery.

You keep hoping that what comes out of our nation’s capital isn’t so tainted by smash-mouth politics. That watching a Sunday morning talk show is more than one rung up from the Jerry Springer Show.

You wish you could believe that providing more people with health care   would mean lower costs for everyone, but that seems more wishful than logical.

One thing that seems certain is whatever the outcome, your government will be bigger and more powerful in ways it hasn’t been before, and you aren’t sure that’s a good thing. Not long ago, it seemed everyone agreed that less government was better.

But bigger and more authoritative now seems inevitable.

And even before the final vote on health care, they are moving to overhaul energy production.

It seems like they are remaking the world.

And you aren’t convinced anyone or any group is that smart.

After a year of turmoil, you aren’t looking for miracles, though like a penitent seeking redemption, you would gladly embrace one.

Thomas Oliver writes the Sunday business column. He can be reached at toliver.writeright@gmail.com