No confidence

Economy is a matter of confidence, that is what they say. And confidence is fuelled by communication. So, if we are in a crisis these days it is because confidence is down and because the media give too much attention to negative news, which further erodes confidence.
Does that sound right?
No, it doesn't. It is management-speak and it should not be trusted. Economy is a matter of money, and money is based on value. If you dilute the value the amount of money will increase and there will be riches. Enormous riches. Until it becomes clear how much its value has been diluted at which point the riches disappears.
More and more the economies of the west are based on value dilution. Services dilute value, marketing dilutes value, branding dilutes value and management dilutes value. All these activites do not make anything, they do not create, build, construct or anything of that order. They dilute the value of something else.
To confuse matters, we call it added value, but that is wrong. Branding for example increases the price of a product without increasing its value. It doesn't add, it dilutes. As soon as services are packaged and marketed as products, value dilution is leveraged. And that's when things really start to go wrong.
It has nothing to do with confidence. When money starts losing its value, people become poorer, and it will take a while before the money has regained enough value to support another round of dilution by managers and marketeers, by branding or by services.
Wait for it.