A New Year

I greeted 2K11 (as I've so trendily taken to calling this new year) with a sense of optimism. Apparently so has much of the rest of the country.
We spent our little hearts out on Christmas presents for our loved ones, pent-up demand egging us and our debit cards (we have learned SOME lessons) on in a spirit of giving... And, to think we were helping the economy at the same time? Oh, joy!
(Oops, my New Year's resolution to be less sarcastic and judgmental just bit the big one.)
I was in the New York area for a few days last week. There it really did seem as though the recession was over. Bonuses were back and people were party-ing-- and spending-- like it was 2007. Wall Street ended its year with the strongest December in recent memory, and housing prices nudged upward again.
Yet, here in Rochester (as in much of "fly-over land"), a job with decent pay is still very hard to come by. The jobs that are around tend pay less than the ones that were lost, or are temporary. They are jobs without benefits at the same time that health insurance rates jump by double-digit percentage points.
Will our nation's spirit of optimism be enough to reach beyond Wall Street or the leafy avenues of the New York suburbs?
Maybe optimism is a personal choice, rather than an economic indicator. It's just too depressing to stay pessimistic all the time. And, frankly, it's downright un-American. If we focus too much on the fact that Wall Street is doing more than fine while the perverbial Main Street continues to suffer, it will all be too much to bear. So I am choosing to be optimistc. So, there.