During the Great Moderation, right-wingers were generally economic optimists and left-wingers tended to be economic pessimists.
For reasons to be explained shortly, they are much closer to being right than the pessimists.
Tindle explained that, in general, optimists tend to experience less stress than pessimists when faced with problems, and they tend to assess the situation, cope with the problem head-on, and mobilize support to solve issues, more so than pessimists.
It turns out that the U.S. current account deficit has been easier to finance than pessimists think.
That would be a boon, for after ten years in which the economy grew by over 3% a year, growth this year is likely to fall to 2.4% (say the optimists) or even below 2% (the pessimists).
Nor is the bold Mortier course driving off private sponsors, as many pessimists predicted.
The test may also reflect more local confidence in South Africa than the pessimists expected.
Brazil has followed more or less the opposite of the agro-pessimists' prescription.
The move to fiat money (paper not backed by gold) created the huge expansion in global money supply that the pessimists had predicted.
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Some of my clients are unreconstructed pessimists about Japan.
Slow growth and gradually higher saving is a less dramatic outcome than either the pessimists or optimists predict.
Nonsense, argues Peter Odell, a grand old man of oil forecasting who proved wrong the pessimists of the 1970s.
While CSC shareholders celebrated the news by launching the stock into new-high territory, there are still plenty of pessimists on Wall Street.
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Still, pessimists reject these arguments.
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But unlike the optimists, the pessimists find this deeply disturbing.
Neither the optimists' nor the pessimists' scenario is inevitable.
Japan's monthly survey of consumer confidence showed pessimists slightly outnumbering optimists in May.
It would take another three years before the addition of Chivas USA in Los Angeles and Real Salt Lake took the league back to an even dozen but still the pessimists out-numbered the optimists.
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